Today we launch the second year research report for our RCRP project. We recruited 10 Peer Researchers (PRs) to carry out research within their communities on the ways in which structural racism affects them, focussing on the themes of housing, health and wellbeing.
For black and global majority communities (BGM) , poor health does not begin in a clinic, and recovery does not end there. It begins at home or in the absence of one. Damp walls, overcrowded rooms, unsafe neighbourhoods, insecure tenancies, and homelessness shape health and mental wellbeing outcomes long before care is accessed.
Yet these realities are frequently invisible in policy, fragmented across systems, and borne most heavily by those with the least power to be heard.
This report makes the invisible visible. It draws together evidence, lived experience, and frontline insight to show how housing conditions directly affect physical and mental health, health inequalities, and life chances. It reveals not only the scale of the challenge, but also the real cost of inaction socially, economically, and morally.
Crucially, this report points to solutions. It shows that when health and housing sectors work together when prevention is prioritised, and Black and Global Majority people’s lived realities are placed at the centre, rather than at the margins better outcomes are possible.
This launch is not an endpoint, but a call to action. Making the invisible visible is the first step. Acting on what we now see must be the next.