'Disproportionate' impact of Covid on Luton's black and Asian communities will be investigated

Luton Borough Council's health inequalities delivery board (HIDB) presented its latest findings to councillors.

"A sub-group of the HIDB is working on a project to better understand the disproportionate impact of Covid in black and Asian population groups," stated the report to the council's health and well-being board.

An action plan will cover six priority areas, as part of the Luton 2040 vision priority of protecting the most disadvantaged.

These areas are inequalities and Covid-19 response; physical activity; mental health and well-being; substance abuse and crime, safety and domestic abuse; and housing and homelessness.

The council's service director for population health, Sally Cartwright, said: "We have an action plan within this group which drives forward some of the key priorities within the population well-being strategy.

"Those six key areas will be developed in line with this strategy and the Luton 2040 vision.

"We reviewed mental health needs assessments, led by public health, which we've completed.

"One of the recommendations from this paper linked to that is around bringing back to the board this needs assessment.

"The other important area we've been focusing on more recently is around the inequalities work, responding to the disproportional impact of Covid in certain ethnic minority groups.

"We're taking forward a project as part of a working group from this board looking at this.

"It will involve community engagement and a qualitative research approach, as well as a survey, to tackle some of these issues and understand some of the matters around inequalities and structural variations further.

"One of the recommendations is around that inequalities project and bringing back a report on that to a future board meeting," she explained.

"That's underway and the findings will be emerging over the coming month.

"Mental health needs assessment findings and actions are developed as part of the delivery board action plan, and we'll bring back a further review of that to this board."

Mental health actions for Luton will be developed from the findings, data and further talks with partners, explained the report.

These actions "will focus particularly on prevention, inequalities and Covid recovery".

Councillors agreed two recommendations to continue the Covid-19 inequalities project, and that the board reviews the mental health needs assessment findings along with any actions developed.