Inequalities in diagnosed health conditions by ethnicity
About 2 mins
Key points
- People from Bangladeshi, Pakistani and black Caribbean backgrounds have the highest levels of diagnosed ill health in England.
- Chinese people have the lowest levels of diagnosed ill health in England.
People from Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds have more diagnosed diabetes, chronic pain, cardiovascular disease and dementia
There are significant levels of ethnic inequality in diagnosed illness within the population, concentrated on a few diagnosed conditions, including chronic pain, anxiety and depression, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
This chart shows the average level of diagnosed illness and the proportions of different health conditions, by ethnicity in England.
- People from Bangladeshi, Pakistani and black Caribbean backgrounds have the highest levels of diagnosed ill health in England.
- People from Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic backgrounds have the highest rates of chronic pain, diabetes, dementia and cardiovascular disease.
- White people have the highest rates of diagnosed anxiety or depression, alcohol problems, atrial fibrillation and cancer. They have the lowest rate of diagnosed diabetes.
- Overall, Chinese people have the lowest levels of diagnosed ill health in England.
This analysis reflects disparities in diagnosed health conditions and therefore only shows inequalities in needs that are identified by the health system. Evidence suggests that access and engagement with care is limited for some population groups, often on the basis of ethnicity. Therefore, this analysis can only reflect inequalities in diagnosed prevalence rather than true prevalence.
- This analysis uses detailed patient-level administrative data linked for primary (CPRD Aurum) and secondary care (Hospital Episode Statistics) from a large patient sample (2 million before sample exclusions).
- Average levels of diagnosed illness are measured by the Cambridge Multimorbidity Score (CMS), which provides an aggregate measure of illness by combining the impact of each condition on health care usage and mortality. This can then be used to compare illness levels across ethnic groups. The CMS assigns a ‘score’ to 20 conditions, to indicate the impact of a patient being diagnosed with a condition on their health care use and their risk of death. For instance, cancer and heart failure are given higher scores than hypertension (high blood pressure) or hearing loss, because they are more likely to lead to death, or unplanned hospital admissions, and are more likely to result in greater primary care needs.
- ‘Other’ conditions include asthma, chronic kidney disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), connective tissue disorders, constipation, epilepsy, hearing loss, hypertension, irritable bowel syndrome and psychosis.
- Some conditions are grouped for presentation purposes. Diabetes includes Type I and Type II diabetes.
- Read further details on the data used in this analysis: Quantifying health inequalities in England
Source: Health Foundation REAL Centre analysis of patient level primary care data (CPRD) linked to HES and ONS mortality data
