Inequalities for, and within, communities of colour existed before the pandemic and persist today. That trend has also affected trust in doctors and nurses, and information and communication has become much more complex in the social media age. “ the trend in declining trust in government accelerate during the pandemic,” Fenton says. One of the challenges that emerged during the pandemic, particularly for communities of colour, was the lack of trust in the systems that were working to protect them. These were also the issues highlighted in Fenton’s report on Covid-19 and race – people of colour are less likely to have all of these “protective factors” due to the impact of structural discrimination and racism. The biggest determinants are socioeconomic factors such as having a decent home, a good job, and strong relationships with people and your community. Typically, healthcare only accounts for about 10 per cent of population health and well-being, according to the Health Foundation. He and his colleagues at the FPH are working to turn what he describes as the “legacies” of the pandemic into developments in public health practice. “Because you have better sustainability, better engagement and better longevity of your work if communities are at the centre of what you’re doing.” “A big part of my practice, and what we promote as a faculty, are those community-centred approaches,” he says. That includes developing anti-racist strategies, providing training and capacity building to health and care staff, working with communities to help them and the FPH understand the impacts of racism and discrimination, and developing programmes that work for communities. “Structural discrimination and racism is a public health issue, a major public health challenge, and we believe that we can bring a public health approach to addressing these issues,” he says. The FPH is charged with setting the standards for public health specialists in the UK. “Improving health and tackling inequalities are exactly what we do as public health practitioners and it is absolutely important for us, as practitioners in public health, to be honest about how we describe those inequalities,” Fenton says. Science and Technical Research and Development.Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities.Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives.Information and Communications Technology.HR, Training and Organisational Development. Health - Medical and Nursing Management.Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance. “I started my career at the beginning of the HIV/Aids pandemic and it in fact shaped why I went into public health, and the work and the values that I bring to my work today,” he says. This was not the first pandemic Fenton had faced. He was commissioned to review the evidence and produced a report in June 2020 that found an association between structural factors such as housing, income, work and the experience of racism, and the higher mortality rates for BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) groups. It was Fenton to whom the government turned to understand what was happening and why people of colour were more likely to die from Covid-19. “The pandemic really shone a light on inequalities and, in fact, it was so distressing to see how fast those inequalities appeared,” Kevin Fenton, the president of the Faculty of Public Health (FPH) and one of the world’s leading public health practitioners, tells Spotlight. It soon became clear that ethnic minorities were disproportionately dying from the coronavirus. The pictures were overwhelmingly of people of colour, mourned by their families, friends and communities. On social media news was being shared about medical staff dying from Covid-19. Weeks into the pandemic, a disturbing pattern started to emerge.
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