Recording ethnicity in primary care: assessing the methods and impact

摘要

The reduction of ethnic health inequalities has been a priority for government health policy in the UK since the introduction of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act in 2000.1 This Act places a duty on all public bodies to consider the race-equality implications in all of the policies that shape their operations. The UK is one of the few European countries that officially recognises the need for ethnicity data to support service-monitoring purposes and places no restrictions on the collection of such data; this is in contrast to France and Germany, for example, where restrictions on collecting such data do exist.2