Ethnic monitoring: Is health equality possible without it?

The collection and use of ethnic group data enables health services to identify and respond to health inequalities
as experienced by different social groups in terms of health status, access to health care, experience of health
care and health outcomes (CRE, 2002). A powerful rationale for the collection and use of ethnic group data is
therefore that of social justice. Equity is a core founding principle of the National Health Service (NHS)
(Delamothe, 2008) and this stance is reiterated and expanded in the NHS Constitution (NHS, 2009). The recent
White Paper on the long-term future of the NHS, Equity and Excellence, explicitly endorses the commitment to
equity, envisioning an NHS that ‘eliminates discrimination and reduces inequalities in care’ (DH, 2010, p. 8).