'People might not trust the system with their health. But they will trust us'

The medical world has long had a disparity in data when it comes to research in communities where black and brown people in the UK reside. Statistics reveal only around five percent of people from BAME groups who were spoken to had ever participated in medical research, despite accounting for around 14% of the population in the UK.

One group that knows all about this issue is Greater Manchester’s African and Caribbean and African Health Network(CAHN). Established in 2017, by chairperson Dr Faye Ruddock, they are an agency that works with health institutions to deliver research and large-scale projects in Black and South Asian communities particularly.

To break down just why there is a lack of research in these communities, the MEN spoke to Faye, chief executive of CAHN, Charles Kwaku-Odoi and business development and impact manager, Percy Akudo.

Percy told the MEN: “We often find that when we are the ones liaising with people directly, we find them to be more responsive. So, I suppose it goes down to that thing of lack of trust with the systems and some of those things.

“We can recruit people and pass those names over and then we give them to people who have commissioned the work and they come back and say the people that you passed on the details, five of them dropped out.

“In cases where we’ve maintained the engagement by ourselves, we find them to be engaging all through really. We even advise partners to allow us to fully take charge of the whole system.

“We know how to structure the languages and engage people."

The ‘lack of trust’ that Percy is relates to a history of how ethnic minorities have been grossly mistreated in a number of health projects nationally and globally.

For example, in the 1960s, Punjabi