4. How is the Welsh Government promoting strong public health messages with Wales's black, Asian and ethnic minority communities? OQ58026

Action to target strong public health messaging to Wales’s black, Asian and minority ethnic communities is embedded across our public health prevention work, to help people maintain a healthy weight, stop smoking, and support their mental well-being. We are committed to tackling the health inequalities that we know these communities experience.

Thank you for that, Minister. During the pandemic, I think it became ever more clear that there are very considerable health inequalities within our ethnic minority communities. There were issues with getting messaging across with vaccination rates and a host of economic and social conditions. And thankfully, Minister, Muslim Doctors Cymru stepped forward—and a constituent of mine, Dr Kasim Ramzan, was part of that—to help get messages across in community languages, to raise awareness, to hold vaccination clinics in mosques, to hold Zoom meetings, to link relevant professionals together. They did a tremendous amount of work, Minister, as I know you're aware. Now that we're hopefully coming through the pandemic, I'd like your reassurance, really, that Welsh Government will continue to work with Muslim Doctors Cymru to address the ongoing health inequalities in our black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, because there's still a lot of work to do.

Thank you very much, John, for that question. As you've highlighted, the pandemic laid bare, really, the health inequalities faced by black and minority ethnic communities, and that's why the First Minister established the group to look at those health inequalities, which are a priority for us. I'm really grateful to Muslim Doctors Cymru for the work that they did. I know that they helped us with webinars, that they did Q&As with the community and have been really, really active. So, I'm very happy to place on record my thanks to them for what they're doing.

You'll be aware that, as part of our COVID-19 response, Welsh Government set up a network of 11 community outreach workers to try to tackle the issues around engagement in black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. And, although the focus of test, trace, protect is now changing, those community outreach workers will be continuing to work with ethnic minority communities to try to tackle those health inequalities. And I think it's really important, going forward, that when we do tackle those health inequalities, that we are doing that in a co-produced way with the very communities that we are trying to reach.

I'd like to thank the Member for Newport East for raising this really important question here in the Chamber today. Deputy Minister, it was no secret, as the Member for Newport East has said, that people, particularly from ethnic minority backgrounds, faced severe health inequalities during COVID-19, and that was quite prevalent and at a much higher rate for those people from the Bengali, Indian and Pakistani ethnic groups, who are more likely to live in multi-generational homes with high exposure to the virus due to the nature of their jobs and also their lifestyle.

A study by the National Institute for Health and Care Research found that when it comes to understanding public health messages, people from ethnic minority groups face specific barriers that prevented them from engaging in behaviour that protected them from the virus. Minister, prior to being elected, my day job was actually working for a PR agency called Mediareach, which was hired by the UK Government, and my role was to oversee the creation and production of 20 advertisements in more than 15 languages, such as Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Mandarin, Arabic—these are just to name a few. Now, all of these were aired on numerous various Asian channels, or ethnic minority channels, with known faces and celebrities representing these channels. And, as much as I appreciate the work of Dr Kasim Ramzan from Newport East, as well as other members of the ethnic minority communities who did everything they could, the three UK Government campaigns that were spearheaded went down incredibly well with the ethnic minorities across the spectrum. So, as health is a devolved matter here in Wales, do you agree, Minister, that there is a need to develop and provide access to clear, accurate, targeted and visible educational materials for the ethnic minority groups that live here in Wales? Thank you.

Thank you, Natasha, for that question, and absolutely I agree that we need to have tailored messages. Our engagement through the pandemic was very proactive in that regard. We contracted a specialist ethnic minority engagement agency. Materials for specific communities were co-produced with individuals from those communities, with quote card images of community leaders explaining about things like vaccination. We've already discussed the work of Muslim Doctors Cymru. We're also committed to doing this work in a range of languages, using a multilingual street team, key documents and information translated into more than 35 languages. And all focus group activity that we undertook has contained a group specifically from ethnic minority communities. So, this is an issue that we are taking very seriously, and we're doing that across the public health arena, because we recognise there are particular challenges across the board with things like promoting healthy weight, mental health, keeping people in employment, and we are very committed to making sure that we do reach the communities that we really do need to reach.