Somali community health profile

Overview

The Somali 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 Somali community.

Although the focus of this report was health inequalities among the Somali 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 Somali population was commonly defined using country of birth data for those born in Somalia, as this information was the most readily available.

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

Birmingham Public Health suggest using an open text response to ask about individuals' country or countries of heritage to capture information on the Somali 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 Somali population was defined by the census 2021 category using the 190 category dataset for country of birth.

  • England and Wales: 108,921 (0.2% of the total population).
  • Birmingham: 10,812 (0.9% of the total population).

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

  • England and Wales: 150,649 (0.3% of the total population).
  • Birmingham: 16,971 (1.5% of the total population).

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 Somali population by reading the Somali 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 Somali community, we have produced several resources including:

View all Somali community health profile downloads.

Webinar

Watch our webinar which provides a summary of the demographics and key health inequalities among the Somali 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 Somali:

Page last updated: 8 April 2024

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