Data, Tech & Black Communities

In England and Wales, nearly a fifth of people come from a BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) background. The mental health of BAME communities is important because people from these communities often face individual and societal challenges that can affect access to healthcare and overall mental and physical health.

The inequalities for different ethnicities and social classes in accessing health services is well documented, but although a number of recent policy developments have aimed to tackle health inequalities, very little is known about the experiences of Black African migrant communities in accessing health promotion information and services. The aim of the study were to examine the experiences of Black African migrant families in accessing health promotion services.

In the U.K., a recent poll suggested that while Britons were strongly supportive of vaccine passports in principle, agreement broke down when asked whether they should be compulsory for pub visits. For marginalised groups, this feels like nudge theory to overcome a reluctance (based on real trauma) to trust public health services: “some employees who don’t want to get the vaccine feel harassed and ostracized.”

Social media influencers of African origin have banded together, using ‘fun activism’ to make their voice heard. “Things have got better, but still today it is difficult to find work, as prejudices still exist. But we don’t want to play the victims of racism – we are self-deprecating, and the idea is to try to bring about change.”

High levels of deprivation and job insecurity, vast income inequality, housing discrimination and medical disparities have long had a severe impact on the tangle of communities and ethnic minority populations that live in these boroughs. But when combined with the necessity to go to work, to take public transport and to share space in densely packed housing, they also provided the perfect breeding ground for a deadly virus. The domino effect would prove catastrophic.

For people of low socio-economic status (SES), a number of factors increase their exposure to COVID-19. Possible causal mechanisms include an increased exposure to the virus, the stress and comorbidities associated with poverty and reduced access to health care. UK policymakers rapidly identified people with multiple comorbidities as particularly vulnerable. However, they must expand their definition of vulnerability to include social factors as risks for COVID-19.

Algorithms are meaningless without good data. The public can exploit that to demand change.

Interviews with diversity managers and internal data obtained by Recode indicate that Black Amazon employees are promoted less frequently and are rated more harshly than non-Black peers.

We’re used to medical chatbots giving dangerous advice, but one based on OpenAI’s GPT-3 took it much further. Researchers experimenting with GPT-3, the AI text-generation model, found that it is not ready to replace human respondents in the chatbox. Medical chatbot using OpenAI’s GPT-3 told a fake patient to kill themselves.

“As a queer Black woman living in a white supremacist world, the traumas I endure and the impacts on my health are never-ending.”

Actor David Harewood's BBC documentary explores why people of colour are more likely to die from Covid-19.

In our latest interview series, Angela Sharda speaks to Sarah Amani, co-founder of The Shuri Network about the importance of improving the representation of BAME women in the digital health space within the NHS.

How many times have you seen an all-female and black and ethnic minority (BME) panel talking about technology? For many people their first time would have been the Shuri Network launch last July. The Shuri Network was launched in 2019 to support women of colour in NHS digital health develop the skills and confidence to progress into senior leadership positions and help NHS leadership teams more closely represent the diversity of their workforce.

A mixed methods analysis of Black Psychologists’ perspectives and UK mental health Trust data. Presented by Dr Fabienne Palmer BSc (Hons), PGCert, ClinPsyD, CPsychol Monday 26th October 2020 South West EIP Race Equality Project.

At some level, psychiatry (the discipline not just the profession), politicians and policy-makers believe that there is something biologically and culturally determined behind the gross variations in the uptake of the most coercive and socially controlling aspects of mental health provision by Black and Brown people.

Within mental health services, Black people tend to have poorer experiences of mental health services, in terms of access, treatment and outcomes. Institutional racism has been cited as one of the main causes for the differences.

People from ethnic minority backgrounds are less likely to access community mental health services but are over represented in acute and more restrictive settings. Their experience of services mirrors that of staff from ethnic minority groups: it is often more negative than their white counterparts and many of them report that they have never been asked about what impact structural racism has had on their mental health and generally on their lives.

There is much controversy about why some people have poorer life chances, and specifically poorer experiences of health and mental health. One explanation for ethnic inequalities seen in the mental health system, and in society in general, is racism. The place of racism as a cause of mental illness, or factor that leads to poor health, is contested. This is mainly as the evidence is emerging but also as there are strongly held views, both by people who do not want to talk about racism and those that do.

Just when we thought it was safe to go back in the water, a new threat has emerged to equal employment opportunity as employers base hiring decisions on artificial intelligence powered video and game-based “pre-employment” assessments of job candidates.

Clearview AI's latest patent application reveals the firm's ongoing plans to use surveillance against vulnerable individuals. According to BuzzFeed News, a patent was filed in August which describes in detail how the applications of facial recognition can range from governmental to social — like dating and professional networking. Clearview AI's patent claims that people will be able to identify individuals who are unhoused and are drug users by simply accessing the company's face-matching system.

Computer vision technology has lower accuracy rates for black females

Software used across the US criminal justice system is biased against Black People. Published 2016

BAME couriers working for Uber Eats and Uber claim that the company’s flawed identification technology is costing them their livelihoods

With the release of two free programs that encourage experimentation with global tuning systems, the musician and researcher Khyam Allami is challenging the Western biases of music production software.

Successfully capturing black skin in photos has been a challenge in the photography world for decades, partially due to the Shirley Card.

Francisca Rockey is passionate about expanding diversity, equity and inclusion in the geography field—and she says elevating Black stories and voices is key.

A collection of data and tools exploring UK state violence