The Digitalisation of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare: Black Women's In/Exclusion in Prevention, Services and Care (Midlands and London) - June 2025 - May 2026
Health inequalities amongst Black African and Black Caribbean communities in the UK are stark. Black people experience some of the worst healthcare outcomes in the UK, with a burden of inequalities wrapped in notions of racialised discrimination and historical prejudice.
Black people also have poor healthcare outcomes when targeting sexual and reproductive healthcare across the board. Moreover, the transitional increase into digital approaches to healthcare delivery and services has witnessed a damming response by marginalised communities to be further excluded from assessing and engaging in this systematic change.
Dr Shardia Briscoe-Palmer leads a research team, funded by NIHR, made of community organisers, academic, community and clinician researchers, and community members, who have been involved in shaping knowledge and practice about HIV, sexual health and women’s health for many years.
The project aims to contribute to existing evidence on digital inequalities and data poverty amongst Black women from different communities, through addressing sexual and reproductive health inequalities. The project will conduct a mixed-method mapping and scoping exercise on the inclusion and exclusion experiences of Black women’s sexual and reproductive healthcare as a direct result of the transformation into digital approaches to prevention, services and care in the UK through community involvement.
The team will engage and develop the co-production work needed to begin to map digital health inclusion/exclusion in sexual and reproductive healthcare for Black women and mitigate the potential for unequal outcomes from a transition to digital healthcare.