EDI progress report 2026

1. Introduction

Since launching in 2022, Igniting Change, our equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) strategy, BHF has made meaningful progress in fostering a fair, diverse, and inclusive culture across its workforce, committees, and Board. Our new set of EDI ambitions redouble this effort and emphasise our commitment to EDI going forward. Below is a summary of our progress since 2022.

2. Creating a diverse workforce in which everyone feels they belong

Why: We know a more equitable, inclusive and diverse BHF will be more successful.

Our progress

All senior leaders have EDI objectives in their personal development plan.
Improving family leave, by now offering 12-weeks’ paid time off for maternity, paternity, shared parental and adoption leave.
Giving a flexible, holistic support leave provision of paid time off to support colleagues or others close to them during a life event.
We started to collect data on governance diversity, which will inform future Trustee and Committee recruitment efforts.
We have a Workplace Adjustment Policy and a ‘Support Needs Working Group’ who meet on a weekly basis to support colleagues in receiving their workplace adjustments in a timely fashion.
Developed the Ignite Aspiring Leaders Programme, aimed at supporting women and colleagues from ethnic minority backgrounds to be better prepared for senior leadership positions.
Continued to develop our suite of inclusive recruitment tools to ensure that we mitigate the occurrence of bias in recruitment decision-making.
Implemented a position statement on Anti-Racism.
We have a vibrant community of 9 Affinity groups, with 2 sub-groups that enrich our understanding of the lived experience of our diverse community.

Impact on our people

We are proud to have met our goal. 90% of staff now say they are treated fairly irrespective of their background, up from 89% last year.
More colleagues now feel that BHF supports people of diverse backgrounds to succeed, from 77% in January 2022 to 88% in January 2025. This is a strong improvement, but disparities remain for colleagues with sensory disabilities, neurodiverse individuals, and Black colleagues.
Ethnic minority representation for the whole organisation has reached its goal of 14%, up from 10% in 2022. Representation within our leadership group remains below our goal.
Following our 2026 analysis the BHF has no gender and ethnicity pay gaps with our median gender and ethnicity pay gap now standing at 0%.

3. Creating more inclusive research studies and a more inclusive researcher community

Why: We know that creating more diverse research, both in terms of participants and research teams, is crucial for producing fairer, more accurate, and more impactful results, shifting research from a "one-size-fits-all" approach to one that reflects the true diversity of the population.

Our progress

We collected demographic data of our research applicants and grant funding committee members between 2020 and 2023, and published our first research funding diversity data to better understand who was applying for research funding, who was receiving it and who was helping to make the funding decisions. Findings from our latest data show that women make up 34% of BHF Funding Committee members - above the 28% representation of women at professor level in UK biosciences, though still below the 49% representation across wider academic staff.
In 2025, we expanded our data collection to include our Patient Advisory Group (PAG), which plays a key role in funding decisions. We also broadened the scope of demographic data to include socio-economic background, caring responsibilities, religion, and sexual orientation.
To better understand the diversity of the cardiovascular research community, BHF has expanded its data collection efforts to include all grant applicants, lead and co-applicants, research staff, PhD students, and Chairs. An in-depth review of applicant journeys and outcomes is underway, with the next report scheduled for publication in 2026.
In September 2024, we published a first of its kind Cardiac Workforce Census to better understand the demographics and subspecialities of cardiologists and senior cardiac nurses in the clinical cardiac workforce. This census has helped support policy work to influence planning a diverse, sustainable cardiac workforce that can meet rising patient need. We have also helped to steer the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research (OSCHR) taskforce to help shape national action to improve representation and progression within clinical academic careers.
In 2025, we completed the Research Workforce Project, which captured demographic data and qualitative insights from BHF-funded researchers. These findings together are helping shape our understanding of the wider cardiovascular research workforce.
To further support under-represented groups, and in response to our data, we’ve expanded our Women in Science programme. We’re committed to hosting an annual event to convene women in the field to help build and strengthen networks, introduced new discretionary and childcare funds for BHF Fellows and partnered with the Academy of Medical Sciences to offer mentoring opportunities.
To support more inclusive recruitment and transparency, we introduced a new expression of interest process for peer reviewers and committee members in 2023.
Following a review and amendments to our grant application and evaluation process, we have published our policy on diversity within research design, setting clearer expectations that the research we fund is designed to be representative and inclusive.
We’ve promoted research on health inequalities and for groups that are to date under-represented in research through strategic partnerships, with GCRFF, NIHR and Wellcome Leap.
We’ve promoted inclusive research and supported more inclusive researcher teams through BHF strategic initiatives. For example, BHF 4-year PhD scheme, BHF Research Excellence Awards and BHF’s upcoming Grand Challenge.

Impact on our research

Female representation has increased on both the Clinical Studies Committee (47%) and the Project Grants Committee (39%).
Ethnic minority representation across all committees has also improved, rising from 11% in 2023 to 14% in 2025.
Since introducing the ‘Diversity & Inclusion Details’ section in funding applications in 2023, 94% of applicants have reported how they have considered factors such as age, sex, gender, or ethnicity and what efforts they will make to ensure representation.
We influenced and promoted inclusive research with our strategic partners leading to the creation of the International Research Challenge on Women’s Cardiovascular Health with Global Cardiovascular Research Funders Forum (GCRFF), the CVD Inequalities Challenge with National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR), and VISIBLE, led by Wellcome Leap and jointly funded by Pivotal, with support from BHF.

4. Highlighting cardiovascular inequalities to drive and influence change

Why: We know that calling out inequalities in CVD prevalence and outcomes is important in addressing the systemic differences in prevalence, morbidity, and mortality across different socioeconomic, ethnic and cultural groups, as well as between men and women.

Our progress

BHF has made meaningful progress in highlighting cardiovascular health inequalities and embedding inclusivity across our engagement and support activities.
Addressing health inequalities is now embedded at the core of BHF’s policy and influencing agenda. We have worked to integrate health inequalities into our engagement with Government, ensuring these issues are central to our advocacy efforts.
In April 2025, we published the Bridging Hearts report, which painted a UK-wide picture of cardiovascular inequalities by exploring how deprivation, sex, and ethnicity can impact people’s cardiovascular health and outcomes. This has helped to inform our long-term strategy to reduce cardiovascular health inequalities across the UK, and we continue to look at ways to build on this momentum through targeted policy and influencing work that addresses issues raised in the report.
We have continued to expand and review our information and support resources to ensure they are accessible to as wide range of people affected by cardiovascular disease as possible. For example, a significant portion of our materials have been updated to include formats such as easy read, British Sign Language (BSL), and audio versions.
We have also made progress in ensuring that the patient stories we highlight across our media channels reflect the full diversity of the communities affected by heart and circulatory diseases.
We have embedded diversity into organisation-wide campaigns such as This is Science, and externally, we aim to position BHF as an inclusive organisation that encourages more patients to come forward and share their experiences.
Broadly speaking, our mission-focused work and decision making have become intentionally more informed by people from diverse backgrounds. Key developments include the establishment of the Community Engagement Advisory Forum (CEAF) and a diverse patient panel to advise on the NIHR Inequalities Grand Challenge.

Impact on health inequalities

We have helped to surface systemic issues by increasing attention on inequalities across our activities and advocacy.
The lived experiences of underrepresented groups are now more visible and understood.
New advisory structures have ensured that more diverse voices directly inform programme and initiatives of the BHF.
We’ve improved our organisational understanding of the underlying mechanisms that prevent many groups from accessing the cardiovascular care they need, and are using our power as an influencing organisation to advocate for policies that address these drivers at national level.

5. Next steps

Following the end of Igniting Change in 2025, we have revised our EDI ambitions. To find out more about our EDI priorities beyond 2025, please visit our EDI pages.