South West London CCG Annual Report and Accounts 2020/21

workforce we employ. Having set a joint objective as a system to address equality, diversity and inclusion we are currently assessing what more the system needs it to do in this area. Two immediate clinical priorities that we are working on are to reduce health inequalities are diabetes and hypertension. We are looking at these priorities and others with the ambition of creating a three-part South West London Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) programme covering: • Community: listening to local people and partners, taking what we have heard and learnt to shape the services we provide so that they are reflective and responsive to the needs of our communities. • Clinical: Taking action to target differential health outcomes to address health inequalities. • Staff: bringing together our workforce to help shape our priorities and set our goals to ensure equitable and fair working practices are adopted across all of our organisations. We all have a vital role to play in creating an environment where our approach can flourish. It is clear that change must happen at borough, neighbourhood and South West London level and so we are working alongside local authorities to harness their knowledge of their communities to make sure our actions make a real difference. This is Everybody vs Racism. Covid-19 The Public Health England report ‘Disparities in the risk and outcomes of COVID-19’, published in August 2020, confirms that the impact of Covid-19 has replicated existing health inequalities and, in some cases, has increased them. These results improve our understanding of the pandemic and will help in formulating the future public health response to it. The largest disparity found was by age. Among people already diagnosed with Covid-19 people who were 80 or older were seventy times more likely to die than those under 40. Risk of dying among those diagnosed with Covid-19 was: • Higher for males than females. • Higher for those living in the more deprived areas than those living in the least deprived. • Higher for those in ethnic minority groups than in white ethnic groups. These inequalities largely replicate existing inequalities in mortality rates in previous years, except for ethnic minority groups, as mortality was previously higher in white ethnic groups. To keep our staff safe as we start to plan future ways of working, we are assessing the needs of each individual staff member, including considering the higher risks from Covid-19 for staff from ethnic minorities. The varying impact of Covid-19 on different 88 | NHS South West London Clinical Commissioning Group