The Newham Primary Care Black and Minority Leadership Network (PCBLN) is a Newham initiative committed to supporting ambitious and effective BME primary care leaders in the local health and care system.
Our focus is on primary care in Newham, so that we are working with people where they are and where they identify as a community. Our ambition is to enable our members to develop their personal networks, skills sets, and their profile, by celebrating and promoting their achievements in delivering enhanced care for all by developing effective solutions to core system and service challenges.
UPCOMING EVENTS
(click on the headings for details)
Who are the members of the NPC BLN Team?
- Dr Kavita Gaur – Newham Training Hub Chair & GP
- Dr Subir Sen – Newham Training Hub, Co-chair & Abbey Road Medical Practice, GP Principal and Trainer & Royal College of General Practitioner, Specialist Advisor
- Dr Shani Bhaskaran – Newham Training Hub, Coaching, Mentoring and Leadership Hub Lead & GP, Boleyn Medical Centre
- Tam Bekele – General Secretary, ELCI LDC
- Bazil Hunte – Consultant Health Psychologist, Osteogenic loading Specialist, Fitness & Wellbeing Consultant, Master Trainer & NLP Practitioner
- Athmajothi Husson – Senior Nurse, Barts Health Trust, The Education Academy
- Dr Annie Mackela – GP, Stratford Village Surgery
- Dr Tamara Hibbert – GP, Market Street Health Group
- Dr Arpana Patel – GP NHC Vice Chair & Maternity Clinical Lead, TNW
- Hazel Trotter – Practice Manager, Market Street Health Group Newham
- Sule Kangulec – NEL ICS Facing Training Hub Managerial Lead, Newham Training Hub Programme Manager
- Nazeem Francis – Newham Training Hub, Project Support Officer
What is our strategy?
Our Strategy is to develop a strong cohort of thought leaders and influencers able to define, evidence, and lead the development of effective strategies and services that enhance patient care and outcomes for all racialised communities in the Borough by:
- Articulating an asset based and anti-racist approach to Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) to drive the adoption of robust anti-racist clinical and managerial practice in Newham.
- Promoting the development of an inclusive culture across the local health and care system that supports our diverse workforce to deliver high quality care equitably to all Newham’s communities.
- Creating safe spaces for local leaders and the wider workface from racialised communities to come together to explore their experiences of racism and then develop effective strategies to address its negative impacts.
- Enhancing our members capacity to hold the governing bodies in the local health economy to account for the implementation of the statutory EDI responsibilities and the development of local objectives to meet the specific needs of our communities
- Actively collaborating in the development of support structures and with other networks seeking to address discrimination across all protected characteristics.
What we are working towards?
The NPCBLN will support the development of a Newham health and care system that meets the needs of all Newham’s communities by promoting unity of purpose, system influencing, local accountabilities, and anti-racist practice.
- Unity pf purpose: Develop a common understanding of how the evolving health and care system in Newham works and a unified voice based in our common experiences and unique insights to evidence how racism works in that system and identify effective strategies to promote an enhanced culture of EDI best practice across the local system
- System Influencing: Provide constructive challenge and meaningful insight to the policy process locally to assist all partners in the emerging health and care structures to improve their performance in delivering EDI by providing access to network members’ and supporter’s expertise in order enhance their capacity to develop and implement effective policies, strategies, and services that value our members and meet the needs of our local communities.
- Structural: Holding the local health and care system to account on behalf of the primary care workforce and our patients for the performance in meeting their statutory equalities and human rights duties
- Transforming Patient Service by promoting evidence-based models of explicitly anti-racist best practice in primary care, and robust patient and community involvement in designing and delivering new models and methods of care to address long established health inequalities.
What is the rational?
The NHS equality, diversity, and inclusion agenda (EDI) is sometimes criticised as being disconnected from the challenges facing the health and social care system – perhaps even a distraction, given the day-to-day pressures on front line staff.
In the slip stream of media reports of disparities in Black deaths during the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, and then the protests sparked by the extra-judicial murder of George Floyd, the NHS Chief Executive has insisted that Black Lives Matter[i]. Therefore, the NHS would escalate its efforts to address long established and widening health inequalities, and the poorer health outcomes and satisfaction with NHS services among our communities, service users, and staff.
There are clear moral, legal, and ethical reasons including Equality, and Human Rights legislation and the NHS Constitution, to support the EDI agenda. Although as the Windrush and other scandals have illustrated, they are not always as central to our organisational culture as we may assume.
We are committed to articulating the business cases based in resource utilisation, service quality, and patient outcomes, that should drive the NHS’s embrace of EDI. There is growing evidence that diverse leadership groups make more informed and robust decisions. That engaging and supporting our workforce to be their best and deliver their best in an environment free from harassment and discrimination enhances resource utilisation. And that an NHS with a diverse workforce that reflects the community it serves delivers better patient care and outcomes.
The BLN will aid the NHS to reduce health inequalities, and promote accountability to all the communities we serve, by ensuring the specific experiences and unique insights of BME communities, patients, and staff, are fully understood, and utilised to promote improved care and health outcomes for all.
The transformation needed to successfully promote the integration necessary to deliver high quality personalised care fit for the 21st century will not be achieved solely by technical, transactional, structural, or operational change. It will also need new partnerships with a diverse range of stakeholders, partnerships where relational imperatives will privilege inspiration over compulsion and make a commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion a prerequisite. New and successful leaders will be those who can build, motivate, engage, and guide diverse, multi-disciplinary teams to deliver enhanced personalised care to all.
The BLN will support and promote these leaders by enabling the partners in the emerging integrated health system to create a shared language and narrative on EDI. A language and narrative that makes them more effective in developing practical solutions to overcoming the strategic and operational barriers to building the inclusive cultures, and diverse leadership needed to make the NHS effective in delivering the high-quality care all communities should expect.
RESOURCES
If you have any questions or concerns regarding this network, please contact the Newham Training Hub on the following email address: nclccg.newhamtraininghub@nhs.net