Partnership is at the heart of this work

What happens when 9 lead organisations - and the communities, partners and networks behind them – come together around a shared ambition for healthier lives?

Announcing our Health Inequities Partnership

Today, we are proud to announce our Health Inequities Partnership.

Our strategy, It Starts with Community, commits us to supporting communities to live happier and healthier lives. At the same time, we promised to put community agency, power and control at the heart of our funding in England.

Last Autumn, we set out an ambition to invest £50 million of truly life-changing funding to support communities and organisations working together to address health inequities.

We all have a role to play

We know not every community has the same starting point. We know from our conversations with communities that there are loud, clear and real concerns about health and health inequities. We know structural racism and discrimination continue to shape the health outcomes of many communities.

These inequities are deeply embedded across systems. They are not the result of isolated actions by individual organisations. They stem from long-standing structural factors. Unequal access to resources. Underrepresentation in decision-making. Discriminatory environments, and more. All of these continue to affect people's opportunities for good health.

We believe we all have a role to play. Tackling health inequities requires collective action. Action across communities, civil society, public services, funders, policymakers and institutions. Partnership is at the heart of this work.

Today marks an important step on that journey.

Collective action

Together, these organisations bring decades of community leadership, lived experience, advocacy, research and action.

They are:

• Leeds GATE

• The Board of Deputies of British Jews

• The Caribbean and African Health Network

• Granby Somali Women's Group

• Race Equality Network

• The Love Tank

• Sunderland Bangladesh International Centre

• The NHS Race and Health Observatory (The NHS Alliance)

• Race Equality Foundation

From the outset, we were clear that tackling structural racism and discrimination would be a bold and important starting point for this partnership. Communities. Organisations. People with lived experience. They have all consistently told us that these issues continue to shape health outcomes and opportunities. By bringing together organisations with different strengths, perspectives and experiences, we hope to contribute to wider efforts to address health inequities and create healthier and fairer futures.

What excites us most is not simply the organisations involved. It is what becomes possible when we all come together.

Indeed, as Jabeer Butt, Chief Executive of Race Equality Foundation, said:

“This award provides an incredible opportunity to build on the Foundation’s success in identifying how racism impacts the health and wellbeing of Britain’s populations and what can be done to tackle it…

“The challenge of improving the building blocks of wellbeing is huge, but we’re excited that this investment in partnerships and co-production will create an opportunity for all people and communities to flourish and experience better health in Britain.”

Supporting the work already happening in communities

Over the coming years, we’ll work together to strengthen collective leadership. To build relationships. To share learning. To develop and implement collective strategies around convening, influencing and leadership. This partnership will support the important work already happening within communities. More than that, it will help to amplify lived experience, strengthen community voices and shape wider change.

Partners will also support us to understand where barriers remain. Where opportunities exist. How future investment can have the greatest impact.

As Syed Musaddique Ahmed, Chair of the Board of Trustees For SBIC, puts it:

“No one’s health should be determined by their race, postcode, or background. The investment from The National Lottery Community Fund will allow [our] five-year Breaking Barriers project to help change that.”

Alongside this partnership, we’ve committed a further £40 million for a first funding initiative that partners will help shape and influence. This will not be our last investment in health inequities. But it is an important step in a longer-term journey.

From funding community projects to investing in community power

At The National Lottery Community Fund, we’ve spoken about moving from funding community projects to investing in community power. For us, this partnership is one of the many ways we’re following through on that commitment – with actions and not just words.

We’re ambitious about what this partnership can achieve together. We are also humble about the journey ahead. There is much more to do. We will continue to listen. To learn. To adapt alongside the communities at the heart of this work.

We’re incredibly grateful to these organisations for the trust they’ve placed in this partnership. For the leadership they continue to show every day. We also want to acknowledge the many other organisations, community leaders, practitioners, researchers, activists and people with lived experience who have helped shape this work so far, through their insights, challenge, encouragement and support. Thank you.

This is just the beginning

This is not the end of a journey. In many ways, it is just the beginning.

Together, we hope to build something bigger than any one organisation could achieve alone: a partnership. Rooted in community. Strengthened through collaboration. And driven by a shared ambition for healthier and fairer futures.