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Who we are & what we do
The Caribbean & African Health Network (CAHN) is a national, Black-led organisation set up in 2017 in Greater Manchester to address long-standing health disparities in our community.
From humble grassroots beginnings, we have grown to become a national organisation leading the call to challenge and address the wider social determinants and reduce health inequalities for people of Caribbean & African heritage in the UK.
The organisation has a focus on improving health outcomes for Black people; for CAHN this involves breaking down the structural, systemic and wider determinants of health (which include racism) and working with the Black community and cross-sector organisations to build community resilience, relationships, and a social movement whereby equity is achieved.
CAHN’s vision is to end health inequalities and wider disparities for Caribbean and African people in a generation.
Our mission is to ensure that the strategic and operational actions of service providers across health and cross-sector agencies and commissioners, lead to racial and social justice for Black people.
Our core values guide us to act with integrity, respect, openness, and transparency, all within a framework of good governance.
As an organisation, we adopt an intersectional approach to engagement and are committed to working in an inclusive, creative, and responsive manner with communities and organisations irrespective of socio-economic status, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, age, and physical or mental ability.
We work in a collaborative way to coproduce and codesign meaningful actions that bring about equity, justice and fairness to those that are underserved and marginalised in the community. Our engagement across stakeholders is purposeful and shared in a way that enables learning and best practices to make our society a better place to live for everyone.
we lead strategic engagement articulating the needs of the community with an evidence base. We galvanise the community to respond to consultations and influence policy and practice; challenging the myth that we are hard-to-reach.
we work with community groups and member organisations to reduce duplication and maximise their impact; making them more effective in achieving their objectives.
we raise awareness about prevention, early detection, effective self-care and self-management. We provide commissioners and service providers with insight and cultural awareness of the Black community.
we support a range of initiatives that brings communities together and builds community resilience. We broker collaborations among organisations to compliment and promote partnership working. We work with member organisations to strengthen their governance and support sustainability planning.
we ensure the voice of the Black community is represented at decision-making tables. Our volunteers from a range of specialities support the most vulnerable in our community.
CAHN is working to achieve the organisational objectives by delivering Health & Wellbeing programmes across six priority health conditions: Cardiovascular, Respiratory, Cancer, Mental Health, Immunology, and Reproductive & Sexual Health.
The evidence base identifies six key areas of work that we need to work with our community and stakeholders to address. Within all these health prevention and intervention programmes there is a requirement to work with our communities to ensure that the action taken is tailored to meet our distinct needs. All our health programmes take into account intersectionality within the protected characteristics to deliver impact across generational groups.
A lot of our work is undertaken in partnership with Trusts, commissioning bodies, local authorities, faith communities, voluntary and private sector organisations and others including universities. This work seeks to enable a better experience and outcome for people of Caribbean or African descent locally and nationally.
