Last week Nicholas, Ramandeep, Jahan and Habib from the Race Equality Foundation, and Sam from Learning Disability England led a session at NHS ConfedExpo 2025, a leading health and care conference ran by the NHS.

Their session was all about tackling the health inequalities of minoritised ethnic people with a learning disability.

Nicholas says:

“We did it to explain why more people need good health care so people get more help and don’t get poorly.

We want everyone to know that they should listen to people and people can speak out.

If you don’t speak out you won’t be counted.“

Ramandeep says:

“It was a pleasure to be part of the panel and to be able to share the experiences of me and Harry to an audience that wanted to know how to improve access to healthcare. When we hear from people with lived experience, it makes people sit up and listen and I hope we managed to do that. A great experience!”

As well as sharing personal experiences, they told people about the We Deserve Better report, which reviewed the experiences of healthcare services for people with a learning disability from Black, South Asian (Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi heritage) and minority ethnic backgrounds.

It was undertaken by the University of Central Lancashire, in collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University, Learning Disability England and the Race Equality Foundation.

They also spoke about an Annual Health Checks co-produced project between the Race Equality Foundation, Learning Disability
England and people with lived experience that created a 10-minute awareness raising video and Easy Read leaflet about Annual Health Checks.

Jabeer Butt OBE, Chief Executive of the Race Equality Foundation, says this about the importance of the resources:

“Whilst the average age of death for people with a learning disability from Black, Asian and minoritised backgrounds is truly shocking, what should also shock is that the cause of death is more likely to be from a preventable illness.  Our co-produced health checks materials have the potential to start seeing a change in this picture and NHS Confed provided an opportunity to secure further supporters to address this inequality.”