Black History Month: Dr Aggrey Burke
Dr Aggrey Burke’s impact on public health and our understanding of how discrimination affects health and wellbeing is nothing short of extraordinary. His pioneering work helped shine a light on the connections between racism, deprivation, and mental health, issues that will continue to shape public health for years to come.
Dr Burke was born in 1943 in Jamaica, where he grew up and completed his medical training, specialising in psychiatry. His early investigations at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital focused on the mental health of repatriates, many of whom had returned to Jamaica from England. Burke noted that the patients were well aware of the discrimination they faced in England based on their skin colour, and the impact that it had on the medical treatment they received and estimated that the reason one in four of these patients went on to die by suicide due to the mental stress and social stigma of being repatriated.
When Dr Burke later moved to England to complete his psychiatric training, he continued to explore the mental health of minority and immigrant populations. His research compared suicide rates among Irish, West Indian, and Asian communities to those of the wider local population, as well as to the rates in their countries of origin. His findings provided some of the first evidence on how social determinants, and particularly racism and poverty can have measurable, damaging effects on mental and physical health.
In the late 70’s, Dr Burke made history as the first Black British person appointed by the NHS as a consultant psychiatrist, paving the way for future generations. Throughout his career, he advocated for fair treatment within mental health services, calling out systemic biases that too often led to the misdiagnosis or over-policing of Black patients. In 1988, Dr Burke co-authored a groundbreaking report outlining the racial and sexual discrimination faced by applicants for medical education at London colleges. This report directly led to an inquiry by the Commission for Racial Equality and changes in the admissions process.
His work helped reframe mental health, moving the narrative away from individual failings, to viewing it as something shaped by society, inequality, and injustice, reminding the medical community that good health cannot exist without fairness, dignity, and respect.
Dr Burke’s legacy stands as a powerful reminder of how vital representation and advocacy are in ensuring good health and wellbeing. His courage to question, research, and campaign has improved the understanding of mental health and challenged the entire profession to do better for everyone.
While the conversation about mental health has moved on since Dr Burke’s initial findings, there is still a long way to go to improve our understanding – and management – of mental health conditions to ensure that everyone, regardless of race, religion, and sexual orientation is able to thrive.
Directors of Public Health, who are responsible for the health and wellbeing of their local populations, are committed to tackling inequalities in health and wellbeing. They work with a wide range of people and organisations at a local level to ensure that the most deprived and marginalised communities, where health disparities are the greatest, have access to the building blocks of good health.