Equity, diversity and inclusion
As a member of the Health Innovation Network, we are signed up to and fully support the Network’s diversity pledges.
- To implement a recognised process to self-assess and improve equality performance in our organisations.
- To empower and support our staff to be positive role models for equality and diversity.
- To understand the impact of our work on all members of our communities and for our work to reflect the equality and diversity within these communities.
We are incorporating these important principles and those presented in the London Workforce Race Strategy into all our work. As part of this, we are monitoring the diversity profile of our staff and implementing actions to help us move closer to representing our population over time, at all levels of the organisation.
For more information please contact Ilias Zapantis or Kemi Olafare.
Taking action
Our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) working group, formed of UCLPartners staff working across the organisation in a range of capacities, help to steer our work to become a more inclusive and diverse organisation. Recent actions include:
- Setting up a process for peer reviewing job descriptions – stress-testing our job descriptions before recruitment to remove any language or specifications that may exclude people or groups from applying. We are sharing best practice and learnings across the organisation to create a pool of knowledge to help recruiting managers.
- Creating a new competency framework with a focus on knowledge and principles of equality, diversity and inclusion and an onus on tackling health inequalities.
- Equality impact analysis – working to develop a process to help ensure that our work programmes help address wider health inequalities.
- Creating an activity pack on a group exercise to understand privilege, developed as a result of our own in-house ‘privilege walk’ exercise, designed to open further discussions on equality, diversity and inclusion amongst staff. We are now sharing the pack with our partners. View the Privilege Walk pack
- Signing up to the HDR UK Black Interns Programme to provide internship opportunities within DATA-CAN for Black health data scientists, a group currently under-represented within the health data research community.
- Unconscious bias and diversity training for all staff. New starters are required to complete this as part of their induction.
- Encouraging and supporting staff to share content and resources to celebrate Black History Month, including creating a podcast on the Black Pound Day
We are actively engaged with the Health Innovation Network EDI group to share best practice and create a common EDI framework nationwide.
Whilst we are committed to embedding equity, diversity and inclusion in every aspect of our work, we also acknowledge that there are still many barriers, and much work to do. We strive to address gaps and prejudices across our organisation, and to continuously listen and learn from our staff and communities.