Progress against our DEI strategy

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is central to our work and values. It is an enabler to our mission; building a society that helps everyone stay healthier for longer.  

DEI is embedded into all aspects of our work through our DEI Strategy (2023-2027). The strategy sets out five workstreams, each mapping the actions we will take to use our DEI work to improve health outcomes: 

• As a funder of health equity  

• As an employer of choice  

• As an influencer and advocate  

• As an investor and custodian  

• As an organisation with a historical endowment 

You can read more about our DEI strategy here.

Alongside our DEI strategy, we have an action plan, to help us track progress and break this work down into actionable steps. This update is about some of the progress against work relating to our ‘historical endowment’ strategy section. 

An organisation with a historical endowment 

One of our DEI impact goals is: 

• Our historical endowment – by 2027, we will have understood the origins of our wealth and how that might enable us to take actions that support us to contribute towards a more equitable and healthier future.  

We have taken a number of actions aligned with our strategy to progress towards this goal. One action was commissioning a report from consultancy Ten Years’ Time.  

Racism continues to be a leading cause of health inequity in the London boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark, across the city and beyond. We know that the legacies of colonialism and ​the trafficking of enslaved people ​​​continue to affect the lives and health of Black people today. We commissioned ‘Moving Towards Reparative Justice: How funders can act’ to help us and other funders in the sector to consider how that should inform how we act as funders today. 

We are pleased that Ten Years’ Time are sharing this report, to mark Black History Month, and to share this resource with other organisations responding to their history.  

Our Board have discussed the report. We have put equity and inclusion at the heart of our mission to improve health equity, and address its root causes, and in how we do that, working with affected communities.  

The Report  

Ten Years’ Time is sharing the report as part of a series, ‘How Funders Can Act’, to provide accessible, practical tools for funders and other organisations considering how to respond to the origins of their wealth. 

The report sets out a framework, and a number of recommendations for organisations to consider. 

We are already taking a number of actions which align with these recommendations, and will consider the others too.  

How our work aligns with these priorities 

We have a number of activities within our DEI strategy which align with these recommendations, for example: 

• Listening to and amplifying marginalised voices in our work. We recognise that lived experience gives important insights, rather than relying on analytic data as the only source of truth. Our first patient panel for Guy’s Cancer Charity is now underway and we are currently looking for community members to join our Trustees on Impact on Urban Health committees.  

• We are working on changing our processes and how we work with partners, to shift the power dynamics in funding relationships and grant-making activities. 

• We intentionally support community-led initiatives and grassroots movements through our funding. 

• We have commissioned work to better understand the proven links between the trade of enslaved people and structural racism and health inequity today, including in our updates on the conservation and contextualisation of statues.  

• Our investment practices. We invest our assets to achieve both financial returns and health equity and we have a target that 20% of our active fund managers are diverse-led.  

We will continue to consider how best to use this framework to inform and guide our future decision-making too.

Recommendations & next steps

As we continue to progress the delivery of our DEI strategy, we will continue to identify and find solutions to health inequity driven by racism, poverty and other injustice, at times informed by recommendations from this report.   

Over the coming months, we will be sharing further updates in relation to our DEI strategy.  We also hope that other funders will find this report helpful in guiding their own reparative justice journeys.   

Visit Ten Years’ Time’s website to read the full report.