Major pharmacy chains trying to reduce risk of Covid-19 to BAME staff with help from Yorkshire university

Lead for the project Professor Mahendra Patel, from the University of Bradford, said the work started after recent reports, including from Public Health England, highlighted how BAME communities face an increasing risk of catching Covid-19 and dying from the disease.

Professor Patel, from the department of life sciences, is supporting the major pharmacy chains in exploring ways to improve access to their healthcare services amongst BAME communities during the pandemic.

He said: "We have known about the health inequalities faced by BAME communities for decades but they have been laid bare by the current crisis.

"However, the very scale of this crisis also means we have a once in a lifetime opportunity to actually overturn these inequalities with a vengeance".

Professor Patel, who is also a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s English Pharmacy Board, has worked extensively with different BAME communities around health inequalities.

Since the start of the coronavirus crisis, the academic has led outreach work to highlight important health messages to BAME communities in Yorkshire and beyond, in languages other than English, including Gujarati, Hindi/Urdu.

Professor Patel said: "BAME communities tend to underreport illness and are less likely to be involved in health research studies.

"We need to support these communities to come forward with confidence, through targeted messaging that works with, not against, religious, cultural and behavioural attitudes and linguistic divides".

Working through eight mosques within Dewsbury and Batley, he was able to reach out to more than 40,000 Muslim members via a video conference Q&A session through Zoom, partly relayed in Gujarati.

He has delivered important health messages and information around Covid-19 through various television and radio stations, including a faith TV channel aimed at a largely Sikh audience with over 60,000 viewers, and regional ITV and news programmes.

Professor Patel added: "We need to know more about the interplay between the virus and genetic, cultural, behavioural and societal differences in different BAME groups, to understand why they are disproportionately affected."

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