Availability and use of UK based ethnicity data for health research

The aim of this working paper is to inform researchers of the availability of ethnicity data in population based datasets which are available for use in epidemiological and social science research. The paper begins by introducing the concept of ethnicity and problems associated with definition and classification. Secondly, the paper charts the evolution of ethnicity recording in the UK census and how this has been incorporated across the NHS. Thirdly, the paper focuses down on to the relationship between ethnicity and health and describes electronic NHS databases in which routinely collected ethnicity data are available for research purposes. Finally, the paper briefly reviews existing work on ethnicity and health which has been undertaken using population wide data from the ONS Longitudinal Study and NHS databases.