Ethnic minorities: specialised databases
Health visitor and some district nurse databases record data on ethnic group, but recording is incomplete and ethnic group is often categorised using 1991 Census categories.
Ethnic group is available for over 90% of episodes of care in genitourinary medicine clinics in Scotland. NHS Grampian had the largest proportion of non-white attendees. More information is available in chapter 4 of the 2009 report entitled "Scotland's Sexual Health Information" which can be downloaded from the ISD Sexual Health web page.
National Drug and Alcohol Waiting Times are published by Public Health Scotland. Publication of reports ceased in March 2025, and dissemination is now through a publication dashboard. Data for the quarter ending March 2025 shows that ethnicity data for people starting community-based treatment is missing for 33.8% of cases. 58.1% of people starting community-based treatment were recorded as having White Scottish ethnicity.
The diabetes core data set includes a field for self-assigned ethnic group, using categories mapping to the 2022 Scottish Census. The Scottish Diabetes Survey reports the percentage of people on diabetes registers who have a record of ethnic group. More information is available in the ScotPHO section on Diabetes data sources.
Pre-school child development data (which monitors children’s social and emotional development at 27-30 months) is published by Public Health Scotland. Ethnicity was recorded for more than 97% of children in Scotland with a review in 2023/24.
Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.
