V4CE Health Advocacy
Health is not simply the absence of illness. It is the condition that makes everything else possible: showing up for family, doing meaningful work, and taking part in community life. For generations, communities have looked after one another through shared knowledge, trusted relationships, and collective care.
Today, who gets good health depends too heavily on who you are and where you live. For many Black and Minoritised Ethnic communities, the barriers are familiar: services that are hard to reach, communication that does not land, and care that overlooks cultural context. These failings are products of systems built around an assumed average patient, leaving those outside it with poorer outcomes.
Health equity means everyone, including underserved communities, has a fair chance to be as healthy as possible. Reaching that goal means abandoning one-size-fits-all approaches and designing services, outreach, and information around the communities they are meant to serve. It also means addressing the economic, racial, and environmental conditions that drive health inequality, rather than only managing its consequences.
The people best placed to lead this shift are already in those communities. Lived experience shows where systems fail, and trusted voices, such as community organisations, faith leaders, and peer advocates, can reach people that institutions struggle to. When these voices are heard and supported, health challenges stop being private struggles and become a shared movement for change.
Community-Led Health: Our Latest Stories
Explore our health advocacy work, from summits and research events to creative campaigns, showing how trusted, community-led approaches are tackling health inequalities in London’s Bangladeshi communities.​​
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Flu Stories: Our Stories. Our Health. Our Protection.​​​​
On 9 November 2026, during London’s Big Week for Flu, the Hason Raja Centre in Whitechapel hosted the launch of Flu Stories, a campaign that uses Bengali storytelling to spark open conversations about flu and vaccination in London’s Bangladeshi communities. Featuring speeches, a expert panel, a Puthi Paat performance and a Bangla drama, the event showed how a song or a scene can start conversations a leaflet cannot.
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Bright Start for Healthy Futures: Building Trust, Knowledge, and Community for Better Health
On 26 March 2026, the London Bangladeshi Health Partnership and Bangla Housing Association hosted “Bright Start for Healthy Futures,” bringing together 25 community representatives and Bangladeshi parents with 18 system leaders to explore how trust and culturally rooted communication can improve vaccination uptake. Through new research on why childhood vaccine uptake is high in East London’s Bangladeshi community, the 3Ts model of Trusted Leaders, Voices and Places, parent-led table discussions and a panel on misinformation, the event showed the value of tailored, community-led approaches over one-size-fits-all models.​
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Health, Heritage and Hope: Redbridge Bangladeshi Health Mela Unites Community
On 4 November 2025, Redbridge Central Library hosted the borough’s first Bangladeshi Health Mela in collaboration with the London Bangladeshi Health Partnership, bringing together residents, health professionals and community leaders to tackle health inequalities. With health checks, vaccinations and screening stalls, talks from local doctors in English and Sylheti, and activities such as Carrom Board and henna art, the event showed how blending health support with cultural celebration can build trust and open access to care.
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Celebrating Two Years of the London Bangladeshi Health Partnership
Marking South Asian Heritage Month 2025, the London Bangladeshi Health Partnership (LBHP) celebrated two years of tackling health inequality and amplifying the voice of London’s Bangladeshi community. Formed in 2023, it has brought together NHS, local authority, voluntary sector and community leaders, hosted London’s first Bangladeshi Health Inequalities Summit, and run campaigns on vaccine equity and maternal health. Reflecting on the milestone, its leaders spoke about heritage, the legacy of earlier generations and the importance of trust, and committed to building a fairer, healthier future led by the community itself.
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London’s First Bangladeshi Health Inequalities Summit: A Resounding Success
On 24 September 2024, the London Bangladeshi Health Partnership (LBHP) held its inaugural Bangladeshi Health Inequalities Summit at Tower Hamlets Town Hall, bringing together over 130 stakeholders from the NHS and the voluntary sector to tackle health disparities in London’s Bangladeshi community. Through keynotes, panels and World Café discussions, the event focused on early onset type 2 diabetes, vaccine uptake and breast cancer screening, and highlighted the need for long-term funding, health literacy and trust between the NHS and the community.
Listening to Communities: Our Reports
Explore our reports on community engagement and health inequalities, sharing what Bangladeshi and Asian communities say about their experiences of health services and what needs to change.​​
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In partnership with Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust, we held “Your Voice Matters” engagement events in Greenwich, Bexley and Bromley to understand how Asian communities experience local mental health and learning disability services. Bringing together community members, faith and voluntary organisations, clinicians and Healthwatch representatives, the sessions revealed low awareness of services on both sides, with stigma, language barriers and fear of intervention keeping people away until crisis point. Trust instead sits with faith leaders, family and people within the community, highlighting the value of relationship-based engagement in bringing community insight into service development.
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HPV and Cervical Cancer Screening Awareness among Bangladeshi Women
In June 2025, Voice4Change England and partners held a cancer awareness workshop with Bangladeshi women in Tower Hamlets, combining interactive activities and discussions on HPV and cervical screening. Insights, strengthened by a follow-up workshop in July, informed recommendations to tackle health inequalities among Bangladeshi women in London.
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Bridging Voices, Building Change
In April 2025, Voice4Change England, in collaboration with the London Bangladeshi Health Partnership and Bangla Housing Association, and with funding from the NHS North East London Integrated Care Board (ICB), held two diabetes workshops in Tower Hamlets and Newham. This initiative specifically aimed to develop concrete proposals for tailoring and improving diabetes prevention and management support in North East London to better meet the unique needs of the Bangladeshi community. The workshops brought together patients, health professionals, and system stakeholders to identify and address these needs collaboratively.
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London Bangladeshi Health Inequalities Summit
The Bangladeshi Health Inequalities Summit, held on September 24, 2024, addressed critical health disparities within the Bangladeshi community across London. The Summit focused primarily on topics of great concern to the community, namely diabetes, including early-onset Type 2, and, in relation to pregnancy.
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​Bridging Health and Community
The Bangladeshi community is one of East London’s largest ethnic minority groups, with deep roots in areas such as Tower Hamlets and Redbridge. Language barriers, digital exclusion and limited trust in healthcare services continue to drive disparities in health outcomes, particularly for conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The Bangladeshi Health Melas were designed as community-led events that combine health promotion with cultural celebration, giving residents accessible opportunities to get advice, health checks and vaccinations from trusted sources.