MSRC Staff

MSRC Staff - Professor Mark Johnson

Research Interests:

Ethnic Diversity; Refugee health care; Social work and minority populations;

Background:

Mark R D Johnson is Professor of Diversity in Health & Social Care, and directs the Mary Seacole Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester. He has developed a substantial body of research and publications relating to multi-agency health and welfare service delivery sensitive to ethnic and cultural diversity, and barriers to access. He works closely with practitioners, statutory Health and Local Authority bodies and community voluntary organisations to develop appropriate models of service delivery and professional training. He is working on collaborative research projects with various community and academic agencies, and is co-Director of the ESRC Centre for Ethnicity and Health in the national Evidence Based Policy & Practice Network. This Centre, run jointly with the University of Warwick, seeks to collate and validate both qualitative and quantitative research including material produced by community groups, for incorporation into professional evidence-based practice.

Professor Johnson commenced his academic research career as a researcher at the inter-disciplinary North-east Area Study at Durham University, where he conducted studies into the effects on local community of the development of New Towns, and government policies to move investment into the region. Subsequently, in over 25 years working as a researcher in the field of ‘race’ and ethnic relations, he has examined a range of issues relevant to community cohesion and satisfaction with public services, including housing, health, policing, employment and careers services, language support and interpreting, and racial harassment. Many of these have led to reports for government departments and local or regional bodies responsible for policy and practice development, as well as publication in academic and practitioner journals.

His recent publications include reports on visual impairment, alcohol use among ‘second generation’ migrants, and health services for of asylum seekers in the dispersal programme, as well as books such as Black and Minority Ethnic Communities - Health & Lifestyles (Health Education Authority 2000), Social Work and Minorities: European perspectives (Routledge 1998), Refugees and primary health care in the West Midlands (Midland Refugee Council) and Building Futures - Meeting the Needs of our Vietnamese Communities (An Viet HA 2000 – written with Richard Tomlins). His projects have included community-based surveys on health education needs assessment and palliative care provision with Asian communities in South Birmingham, and compilation of a database of health research in which black and minority ethnic (BME) groups have been involved as consumers. He also led a team carrying out a systematic review of health care access for the London region of the NHS, and compiled the report of a national investigation into the regulation of health care assistants for the four UK national Departments of Health

Currently, he is exploring issues around religious belief and spirituality in health care, and investigating the applicability of health outcome measures for a multi-ethnic population for the NHS Health Technology Assessment group. He is also actively working with various community groups on health care issues such as cancer and palliative care for populations of diverse ethnic origins, innovative ways of raising uptake of services for the visually impaired, and the welfare needs of asylum seekers.