Fatima Khan Shah, West Yorkshire Inclusivity Champion
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Inclusivity… Inequality… These are important, much-used words – but how do you generate meaningful action?
This episode is with Fatima Khan Shah, West Yorkshire’s Inclusivity Champion. Fatima’s role is new, wide ranging and sits right at the heart of what both the West Yorkshire Mayor, Tracy Brabin, and the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership, led by Rob Webster, are trying to achieve. This is certainly no box ticking role – something new and exciting is happening.
There is a lot to learn from this episode! Fatima is a wonderfully engaging and inspiring interviewee and we discuss the origins of her role and how it works in practice, including some top advice for balancing the desire for quick reform with the importance of bringing people with you on the journey. There is a lot of advice on how to positively influence people, which involves putting yourself in their shoes and tailoring your “pitch”.
We also get into the nuts and bolts of her inclusivity goals, including the main wider determinants of health and wellbeing, how you can move the dial on them and how that plays into improving inclusivity and reducing inequality.
We also have an important discussion on the “culture wars” which are raging at the minute. How should public professionals engage in these debates? How do you tackle difficult issues and call out poor behaviour at the risk of being lazily labelled as “woke”?