In line with international and national drivers for equality monitoring in healthcare, the implementation of an ethnic identifier throughout the HSE, including in primary care, is a priority action in the Health Service Executive (HSE) Second National Intercultural Health Strategy (NIHS) 2018-2023.

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This participatory research project involved a quantitative study to explore where ethnicity data is currently collected and how it is being used. It involved a qualitative study to identify levers and barriers to implementing the HSE ethnic identifier in general practice settings, where most of us access care. The analysis showed that ethnicity data collection in health and social care data collections in Ireland is underdeveloped, fragmented and has too much focus on high-risk populations. While the idea of ethnicity data collection in general practice broadly makes sense to community members and GPs, there are concerns about collecting these sensitive data in busy, under-resourced general practice settings and fears that data may be mis-used. The recommendations are to develop multi-sectoral partnerships and initiatives to oversee data collection and use and to collect ethnicity and migration variables in an Individual Health Identifier record.