Raghib Ali

Epidemiologist

When Raghib Ali began studying the health outcomes of British ethnic minorities, he discovered that, contrary to what he had assumed, non-white people had a higher life expectancy than whites. So for Ali, there is no such thing as “white privilege” in the UK—at least when it comes to health. He found that “deprivation, not race” was far more significant. For example, people in Blackpool have a healthy life expectancy on average 25 years less than those in Westminster. Covid-19 muddied his findings somewhat, since ethnic minorities died at a higher rate than the rest of the population—though Ali ascribes this to social factors like patterns of shared housing and risky occupations.