Kenyan community health profile

Overview

The Kenyan community health profile has identified and summarised the national and local evidence concerning the health, lifestyle behaviours and wider determinants of health that affect the Kenyan community.

Although the focus of this report was health inequalities among the Kenyan community in Birmingham, the limited available information on health inequalities has resulted in data being used from the UK and internationally where available.

Community definition

Within this community health profile, the Kenyan population was commonly defined using country of birth data for those born in Kenya, as this information was the most readily available.

We recognise that this may not be fully representative of the Kenyan community, as this only highlights first generation migrants from Kenya and does not account for Kenyans who were born in the UK.

Additionally, country of birth data overlooks the distinct groups who are migrating from Kenya, namely the ‘Black-African Kenyans’ compared with the ‘Kenyan-Indian’ community. Where appropriate, references are made to both the ‘Black African’ and ‘Indian or South Asian’ ethnic groups within this report.

Birmingham Public Health suggest using an open text response to ask about individuals' country or countries of heritage to capture information on the Kenyan community.

For more information on how Birmingham City Council is standardising demographic data, see the demographics questionnaire.

Population size

Within this community health profile, the Kenyan population was defined by the census 2021 category using the 190 category dataset for country of birth.

  • England and Wales: 134,944 (0.2% of the total population).
  • Birmingham: 3,791 (0.3% of the total population).

Data can also be extracted on the Kenyan community via the 288 category dataset for ethnic group, under the category ‘Black, Black British, Black Welsh or African: Kenyan’.

  • England and Wales: 15,061 (<0.1% of the total population).
  • Birmingham: 276 (<0.1% of the population).

However, ethnicity data must be interpreted with caution, as in England and Wales 64% (n=86,126) of people born in Kenya identified as Asian, compared to 19% (25,183) who identified as Black African. Also, population sizes using the 288 category dataset for ethnic group were likely underestimated, as this was an optional open text response.

Additional analysis by 288 category dataset for ethnic group from the 2021 census is not available.

Health and wellbeing

You can learn more about the health and wellbeing needs, and the identified health inequalities of the Kenyan population by reading the Kenyan community health profile report.

The full profile report does not yet include analysis from the 2021 census. This will be updated at a later date.

Available resources

To support in your understanding of health inequalities among the Kenyan community, we have produced several resources including:

View all Kenyan community health profile downloads.

Webinar

Watch our webinar which provides a summary of the demographics and key health inequalities among the Kenyan community.

You can switch on subtitles once you have started to play the video. A menu will appear on the video screen.

Translated resources

We have translated some resources into Swahili:

Page last updated: 8 April 2024

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