There is increasing ethnic diversity in our society posing challenges for health professionals and health care. Existing texts on ethnicity and health are often esoteric and academic in focus, accessible to researchers and policy analysts rather than health practitioners. Other texts consider a single health topic or cultural group.

Ethnicity, Health and Primary Care is a new book, intended as a broad but concise and practical introduction to ethnicity and health care for a wide range of health professionals - general practitioners, GP registrars, practice and community nurses, bilingual workers, medical students and other health practitioners in training. Although focusing on primary care, the book's general principles and its clinical coverage will be highly relevant to other health and social care practitioners, in addition to those developing and commissioning health services.

Chapters have been written to enable busy practitioners and students to grasp the essentials quickly and easily. The book aims to stimulate readers to learn about and develop an effective approach to ethnic diversity in health care.

Rather than be an encyclopaedia of different ethnic groups and cultural practices, this book emphasises the need for practitioners to respond to people as individuals within a broader understanding of the diverse needs of communities. It thus promotes generic principles for good practice wherever diversity has an impact. Having underlined these principles the book considers major clinical topics and groups arguably of particular concern for the health of diverse ethnic communities.