Black healthcare workers in the UK are more likely than their white colleagues to become seriously ill or die from COVID-19, but the reasons remain unclear. This study will link national healthcare staff records with COVID-19 testing, hospitalisation, and death data to measure those risks precisely. Over 12 months, the team will track a group of ethnic minority healthcare workers, monitoring changes in their physical and mental health. They will also conduct in-depth interviews with a smaller group to understand how these workers perceive their own risk and how their professional and social behaviour has shifted during the pandemic. Because linking staff data to health records raises privacy concerns, the researchers will work with stakeholders—including major national healthcare organisations—to ensure the process is acceptable and transparent. If successful, the findings could lead to targeted workplace protections, such as adjusted rotas, better PPE allocation, or mental health support tailored to the highest-risk groups. The stakeholder group will help translate results into practical recommendations for NHS employers and policymakers.
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Globally many people, including healthcare workers (HCWs), are becoming ill and dying from COVID-19. We have evidence that people from ethnic minorities have a higher chance of going to intensive care and adying from COVID-19.This may also sbe the case for ethnic minorities working in the health system. We want to investigate this using existing data held by national healthcare organisations to understand what the risk of having, and dying from, COVID-19 is for ethnic minority HCWs. We will also follow a group of ethnic minority HCWs over 12 months to see what changes occur in their physical/mental health. In addition we will interview a smaller group of ethnic minority HCWs to understand how risky their jobs are, and how they have changed their professional/social behaviours in response to COVID-19. Using staff data and linking it to healthcare data may be sensitive and so we will explore how to do this in a way that is acceptable. Finally, we want the findings of this research to be useful for HCWs and so we have a stakeholder group of major national organisations to help us do the research, publicise the findings and make recommendations.
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