- hello@omenalagroup.org
The evidenced case for funding: health and leadership crisis affecting African and diaspora communities.
“African and diaspora professionals in the United Kingdom and North America are experiencing a documented, measurable, and largely unaddressed public health crisis — not of physical illness, but of the psychological and relational harm caused by systematic cultural identity rupture. This crisis is invisible in most institutional frameworks, absent from most funding portfolios, and costing both individuals and organisations in ways that current interventions are not designed to address.” |
This document presents the evidence base for that claim, the specific gap in provision it creates, and the case for why Omenala Group — and the programmes it delivers — constitute the intervention the evidence demands.
Rate at which Black leaders leave senior roles compared to white peers with equivalent qualifications and experience
Runnymede Trust, Colour of Power, 2022
Ethnic minority people among the UK’s 1,099 most powerful public positions — a figure that has barely moved in a decade despite significant diversity investment
Runnymede Trust, Colour of Power, 2022
Of Black NHS staff reported experiencing discrimination at work in the past year — the highest rate of any ethnic group in the workforce
NHS Staff Survey, 2023
More likely: Black adults in England to receive a community mental health referral than white adults — but less likely to receive talking therapies or psychologically informed care
NHS Race & Health Observatory, 2023
More likely: Black people to be detained under the Mental Health Act compared to white people — the most extreme endpoint of a system that reaches this population at crisis, not before it
CQC Mental Health Act Report, 2023
Current dedicated public funding for culturally-specific leadership wellbeing interventions for Black professionals in the United Kingdom
Gap analysis, 2024
The leadership pipeline leaks — and we know where · Structural evidence
The Runnymede Trust’s Colour of Power report (2022) documented that only 52 of the 1,099 most powerful positions in British public life are held by people from ethnic minority backgrounds — a figure that has barely moved in a decade despite significant investment in diversity programmes across the public and private sectors. The pipeline does not simply fail at entry. It fails at retention, specifically at the point where seniority becomes real power.
McKinsey’s Race in the Workplace (2021) found that Black professionals are significantly more likely to experience microaggressions, feel the need to mask aspects of their identity, and report that their voices are less heard in meetings — a cluster of experiences that research consistently links to elevated cortisol levels, impaired executive function, and accelerated burnout.
Wingfield’s research on Black professionals in corporate settings documents what she terms the ‘racial tax’ — the additional cognitive, emotional, and relational labour required to navigate institutions that were not designed for Black presence. This tax is not reimbursed. It compounds annually. And it drives the attrition the numbers document.
Sources: Runnymede Trust, Colour of Power (2022) · McKinsey, Race in the Workplace (2021) · Wingfield, Doing Business (2010)
Higher rates of diagnosis. Lower rates of effective treatment. · Clinical evidence
The NHS Race and Health Observatory’s landmark report (2023) documents a consistent and troubling pattern: Black adults in England are more likely to be referred to community mental health services, more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act, and less likely to receive talking therapies or psychologically informed care. The system reaches this population at the point of crisis — and systematically under-serves it with the interventions that prevent crisis from occurring.
The Care Quality Commission’s 2023 Mental Health Act report confirms that Black people are five times more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act than white people. The Office for National Statistics (2022) documents elevated rates of common mental health disorders among Black adults, with particular concentration in the working-age population aged 25–54 — precisely the cohort Omenala Group serves.
Critically, mainstream mental health services are not equipped to address what Airhihenbuwa (1995) and Menakem (2017) separately establish: that cultural identity coherence is itself a clinical protective factor, and that its disruption — experienced daily by professionals navigating institutions not designed for their presence — is a form of chronic psychological harm that conventional CBT and medication pathways do not address.
Sources: NHS Race & Health Observatory (2023) · CQC Mental Health Act Report (2023) · ONS Mental Health Survey (2022) · Airhihenbuwa, Health and Culture (1995)
The WHO framework says this is health. The funding landscape does not agree. · Policy evidence
The World Health Organisation’s Commission on Social Determinants of Health (2008) established that health outcomes are shaped by the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age — including their sense of belonging, cultural coherence, and social participation. Marmot’s UCL review (2010, updated 2020) demonstrates that psychosocial conditions — including identity, agency, and belonging — follow the social gradient and are as determinative of health as income or housing.
Return Theory extends this framework with a specific, testable claim: for communities whose cultural infrastructure has been systematically disrupted — through colonisation, migration, and institutional assimilation — reconnection to ancestral cultural memory is a measurable pathway to psychological integration. This is not an untested proposition. It is a logical extension of the social determinants framework that the health equity field already funds — applied to a population that field has consistently under-served.
Sources: WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health (2008) · Marmot Review, UCL Institute of Health Equity (2010/2020)
The institution tasked with our health is failing its own Black staff. · Workforce evidence
The 2023 NHS Staff Survey documents that 40% of Black NHS staff reported experiencing discrimination at work in the past year — the highest rate of any ethnic group. NHS England’s Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) reports consistently show that Black staff are less likely to be appointed from shortlisting, less likely to reach senior management, and more likely to enter formal disciplinary procedures than white colleagues with equivalent qualifications.
Roger Kline’s research on NHS workforce culture (The Snowy White Peaks of the NHS, 2014, updated 2022) documents that the NHS loses experienced Black clinical leaders at a rate that constitutes a systemic workforce crisis — one driven not by competence gaps but by the psychological cost of navigating institutional environments that were not designed for their presence.
The cost to the NHS is estimated in the hundreds of millions annually when recruitment, training, and turnover costs are fully accounted. This is not a diversity problem. It is a health economics problem — and it is directly addressable through the kind of culturally-specific, psychologically-grounded intervention that Omenala Group delivers.
Sources: NHS Staff Survey 2023 · NHS WRES Annual Report (2023) · Kline, Snowy White Peaks of the NHS (2014/2022)
This is not a problem that CBT, mentoring, or unconscious bias training can solve. · Theoretical evidence
Resmaa Menakem’s clinical work (My Grandmother’s Hands, 2017) establishes that racial trauma is somatically transmitted across generations — held in the nervous system before it is understood by the mind. Joy DeGruy’s research on Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (2005) documents specific, multigenerational adaptations in Black communities that conventional therapeutic models were not designed to address. Frantz Fanon’s foundational analysis (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961) demonstrated that colonialism is fundamentally a psychological project — one whose effects outlast the formal colonial period by generations.
The implication for intervention design is precise: culturally specific, ancestrally grounded, community-held approaches are not a preference — they are a clinical necessity for this population. An intervention that does not engage the cultural dimension of the harm cannot resolve it.
This is why decades of diversity training, mentoring programmes, and employee resource groups have failed to close the gap the data documents. The gap is not one of opportunity or aspiration. It is one of psychological infrastructure — and that infrastructure does not exist yet.
Sources: Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands (2017) · DeGruy, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (2005) · Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
THE GAP IN PROVISION
The gap between what is needed and what exists is total.
Culturally-specific, ancestrally-grounded, community-held psychological interventions for African and diaspora professionals. Group-based, therapeutic in method, evidenced in outcome. Delivered by practitioners from within the community. Sustained over time, not delivered as one-off events.
Generic leadership development. Unconscious bias training. Employee resource groups. Mentoring schemes. All valuable in their own register. None of them theorised, culturally-grounded, or designed to address the specific, evidenced psychological harm that this population carries.
Elevated turnover of experienced Black talent. Underutilisation of senior leadership capacity. Culturally toxic working environments that erode psychological safety for entire teams. The NHS alone estimates hundreds of millions annually in avoidable recruitment and attrition costs.
Chronic stress-related illness. Diminished executive function. Impaired relational capacity. Identity fragmentation. Premature exit from leadership roles at precisely the point where their contribution would be most significant.
Omenala Group does not claim to solve structural racism. It claims to build the psychological and cultural infrastructure that allows those experiencing it to lead — fully, sustainably, and from their whole selves — while the structural work continues. These are not competing priorities. They are complementary ones.
Return Theory provides the academic architecture that positions the programmes as health interventions, not coaching products. The theory is grounded in established scholarship — Menakem, DeGruy, Fanon, the WHO social determinants framework, the Marmot Review, Airhihenbuwa — and is designed for independent validation and evidence generation.
The programmes are not designed for this community. They are designed from within it — by a practitioner who carries the same inheritance and the same institutional experience as the people she serves. This is the difference between a culturally adjusted intervention and a culturally centred one (Airhihenbuwa, 1995). It is the difference that determines whether an intervention works.
Both programmes are designed to generate pre/post outcome data using validated wellbeing instruments: the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS), the Leadership Self-Efficacy Scale, and the Cultural Identity Integration Index (CIII, adapted). University research partnerships are in development for independent evaluation. The evidence base builds with every cohort.
The Alumni Circle, the Annual Summit, the credential pathway, and the upgrade logic between programmes are all designed to compound in value over time. Funders are not investing in two cohorts. They are investing in the founding infrastructure of an institution that will serve this community for decades.
“The health equity field has spent two decades documenting this crisis. The workforce development field has spent two decades failing to resolve it with tools that were never designed for it. Omenala Group is the first funded, theorised, community-embedded intervention to address its psychological root — not its surface expression. This is not a gap in provision. It is an absence. And the absence is costing us all.”
To discuss this case for funding or request a meeting: hello@omenalagroup.com ·
Memory is infrastructure. Return is medicine. This is the work.
What changes in participants, how it is measured, and over what timeframe. Pre-cohort outcomes framework — designed before the first participant enters the room.
Outcomes are not what a programme delivers. They are what changes in a person — measurably, sustainably, and in ways that matter beyond the room where the work happened. Omenala Group has designed its outcome framework before its first cohort runs. That is a deliberate signal: we are building for evidence, not for testimonials. |
This document sets out the seven outcome domains we are measuring — three for the Ugwu Dragons Intensive and four additional domains for the Ugwu Leader Program — including the instruments used, the timepoints of measurement, and the artefact evidence generated by each programme.
3 weeks + 4-week follow-up · targeted intervention
Primary wellbeing outcome · measured pre, post, and at 4 weeks
Measured by: Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) — validated 14-item scale. Administered at intake, completion, and 4-week follow-up. Minimum detectable change threshold: 3 points on the 14-item scale.
Leadership efficacy outcome · measured pre and post
Measured by: Leadership Self-Efficacy Scale (LSES) — adapted Bandura self-efficacy framework, 10-item scale. Pre and post. Plus participant-reported Behaviour Change Log at 4 weeks.
Identity coherence outcome · measured pre and post
Measured by: Cultural Identity Integration Index (CIII — adapted) — bespoke instrument drawing on Cross’s Nigrescence model and Phinney’s Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure. 12-item scale, pre and post. Plus qualitative narrative analysis at completion.
12 weeks + 6-month follow-up · initiatory programme
The Leader Program outcomes subsume and extend the Dragons outcomes. All three Dragons domains are measured again at programme entry, providing a baseline that captures any prior Dragons work. Four additional domains are tracked across the full 12-week arc and at a 6-month alumni follow-up.
Foundational identity outcome · measured at intake, week 7, completion, and 6 months
Measured by: CIII full version at four timepoints. Leadership Narrative Analysis — qualitative coding of Root Map and Leadership Story using identity integration framework. Identity Stability Index (adapted) at intake and completion.
Power and ethics outcome · measured at completion and 6 months
Measured by: Qualitative assessment of Power Ethics Charter against five-dimension rubric. Relational Leadership Inventory (adapted, short form) at intake and completion. Facilitator observation notes across weeks 5, 9, and 12.
Behavioural commitment outcome · completed by week 7, followed up at 6 months
Measured by: Courage Contract completion rate (cohort-level percentage). Courage Measure (Howard & Alipour, adapted) pre-programme and 6-month follow-up. Facilitator-coded retreat testimony.
Community and continuity outcome · measured at 6 and 12 months
Measured by: Alumni Circle engagement rate (quarterly call attendance, resource access). Peer connection survey at 6 and 12 months. Alumni Summit attendance as annual cohort-level metric. Net Promoter Score (NPS) at 6 months.
All instruments are either validated scales with published psychometric properties, adapted versions of validated scales with documented justification, or bespoke instruments designed specifically for Return Theory outcomes and subject to independent review. No outcome is measured by self-report alone.
Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale
Validated 14-item positive wellbeing measure used across NHS and public health research. Strong psychometric properties, sensitive to change in community mental health interventions. Used as the primary wellbeing indicator for both programmes.
Timing: Intake · completion · 4-week follow-up (Dragons) · intake, weeks 4, 7, 12, 6-month follow-up (Leader Program)
Leadership Self-Efficacy Scale
Bandura-derived measure of confidence in leadership capability. Adapted for culturally-specific professional contexts. Captures both task-based and identity-based dimensions of leadership efficacy — distinguishing between ‘can I do this’ and ‘am I the kind of person who does this.’
Timing: Intake and completion for both programmes · 6-month follow-up for the Leader Program
Cultural Identity Integration Index
Bespoke instrument drawing on Cross’s Nigrescence model (1971, revised 1995) and Phinney’s Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM). Measures the degree to which cultural heritage is integrated into — rather than suppressed from — professional identity. Adaptation rationale documented for academic review.
Timing: Intake and completion (Dragons Intensive) · four timepoints plus 6-month (Ugwu Leader Program)
Leadership Narrative Analysis protocol
Structured qualitative analysis of Root Map, Leadership Story, Power Ethics Charter, and Offering Statement. Coded using a five-dimension rubric: identity coherence, cultural grounding, relational orientation, ethical clarity, future directedness. Two independent coders per artefact. Inter-rater reliability tracked across cohorts.
Timing: At completion and 6 months for the Leader Program · coded within 30 days of artefact submission
Participant self-report behaviour tracking tool
Structured four-week log capturing real-time application of dragon-facing practices in the month following the Dragons Intensive. Tracks: frequency of pattern recognition, use of interruption strategies, and one documented behavioural shift. Submitted at 4-week follow-up. Triangulated against peer accountability partner report.
Timing: 4 weeks post-completion · Dragons Intensive only
Cohort-level binary completion outcome
Tracked at two points: whether the contract was completed by the retreat (Week 7), and whether the participant identifies one independent courageous action taken post-programme at the 6-month follow-up. Simple, binary, and publicly accountable — the completion rate will be reported in all annual impact reports.
Timing: Week 7 retreat · 6-month follow-up survey (Leader Program)
“We do not yet have cohort data. What we have is a measurement framework that was designed before the first cohort ran — which is itself the evidence that we think in outcomes, not activities. Every instrument we have chosen is either validated, adapted with documented justification, or bespoke and independently reviewable. When the data exists, we will publish it in full — including findings that challenge our assumptions. That is what it means to build an evidence-generating institution rather than a well-intentioned programme.”
To discuss this case for funding or request a meeting: hello@omenalagroup.com ·
Memory is infrastructure. Return is medicine. This is the work.
The outcome measurement framework we are building: quantitative and qualitative evidence, university research partnerships, and independent evaluation. Designed before the first cohort runs.
There is a specific type of credibility that only a measurement framework can establish — the credibility of an organisation that thinks in evidence rather than anecdote. This section does not contain data. We do not have cohort data yet. What it contains is the architecture we have built to collect, analyse, and publish that data — designed before a single participant enters the room, and designed to meet the standards of the health equity research field we are entering.
Scales tell us whether scores changed. Testimony tells us what that change felt like and what caused it. Artefact analysis tells us what commitment the participant made and whether it was substantive. We need all three to tell the full story of impact — and to meet the evidential standards of health equity funders who have seen too many programmes with strong testimonials and no data, and too many programmes with clean numbers and no mechanism.
Validated scales · pre/post · longitudinal follow-up
Quantitative data answers the question: did scores change, and by how much? It enables comparison across cohorts, benchmarking against population norms, and the kind of statistical statement that health funders can take to internal governance. We use validated instruments with established psychometric properties so our findings can be understood in relation to existing research.
Structured testimony · narrative analysis · artefact coding
Qualitative data answers the question: what actually changed, and what did that mean to the person it happened to? Scales capture magnitude. Testimony captures mechanism — the specific, lived account of how transformation occurred. Qualitative analysis also generates the language and conceptual categories that will inform future Return Theory scholarship.
No single data source is conclusive. A participant who scores higher on WEMWBS and writes a compelling testimony and produces a substantive Power Ethics Charter is providing three independent forms of evidence that point in the same direction. That convergence is what the health equity research field recognises as robust. A programme that relies on testimony alone is telling a story. A programme that relies on scales alone is reporting a number. We are building the case for both.
A theory of change is not aspirational language. It is the testable causal argument that links what a programme does to what it changes — and that measurement is designed to verify or challenge. Omenala Group’s theory of change has four stages, and we collect data at each one.
The measurement framework collects data at each stage of this chain — not only at the end. This matters because it allows us to identify where in the logic the change is or is not occurring, and to refine the programme accordingly. An organisation that only collects endpoint data cannot learn. We intend to learn.
Most programmes collect participant feedback at the end of a session and call it evaluation. We collect structured testimony using a guided reflection protocol that generates qualitative data anchored to specific outcome domains. This testimony is then coded by independent analysts against our five-dimension rubric — not self-reported and filed.
Testimony collection protocol — three timepoints
At completion: guided reflection testimony Participants respond to five structured prompts anchored to each outcome domain. Not ‘what did you enjoy?’ but ‘describe one moment in the programme when you experienced a shift in how you understand your own authority.’ The prompts are designed to surface mechanism, not sentiment. Responses are coded by two analysts within 30 days of submission. |
At 4 weeks / 6 months: behaviour change testimony A follow-up structured reflection anchored to specific, observable behavioural changes. Not ‘I feel more confident’ but ‘I had a conversation I had been avoiding for six months. Here is what happened.’ The specificity requirement is built into the collection instrument. Triangulated against peer accountability partner report (Dragons) or Alumni Circle engagement data (Leader Program). |
At 12 months: longitudinal impact testimony Annual alumni check-in capturing how the programme continues to influence leadership practice. Coded for sustained identity integration, ongoing community engagement, and evidence that the Offering Statement has been enacted in the real world. This is the testimony that builds the long-term institutional case for sustained public investment. |
All qualitative testimony and programme artefacts are coded by two independent analysts against a five-dimension rubric. Inter-rater reliability is tracked across cohorts. The five dimensions are:
The most significant step Omenala Group can take toward institutional credibility is partnering with an independent academic institution to co-design, conduct, and publish the evaluation of our programmes. When we can say ‘independently evaluated by [University],’ every conversation with a statutory funder, a commissioner, or a research body changes fundamentally. We are not asking them to trust us. We are asking them to engage with verified evidence.
PRIORITY TARGET UCL Institute of Health Equity Prof Michael Marmot’s institute is the world’s leading body on social determinants of health. If UCL validates that cultural memory is a social determinant of wellbeing, every health equity funder in the UK takes the call. Target partnership: co-design the CIII instrument, conduct independent outcome evaluation of both programmes, and co-author a paper positioning Return Theory within the social determinants of health framework. |
PRIORITY TARGET King’s College London — Institute of Psychiatry KCL has a dedicated Black mental health research strand and clinical expertise in community-based psychosocial interventions. A KCL partnership provides clinical credibility to the intervention claims and a pathway to NHS commissioning conversations. Target partnership: independent clinical validation of programme protocols, outcome instrument review, and joint submission to a peer-reviewed mental health journal. |
APPROACHING Goldsmiths, University of London Goldsmiths has a strong tradition of community-based, co-produced psychosocial research. More accessible for a first formal partnership than UCL or KCL, and their psychosocial studies framework aligns directly with Return Theory. Target partnership: co-produced research paper on cultural memory as psychosocial health determinant, using Cohort 1 and 2 data. First formal university partnership, establishing proof of academic relationship for larger bids. |
APPROACHING University of Birmingham — African Studies Birmingham has one of the UK’s strongest African Studies departments and an established record in Igbo intellectual tradition scholarship. Their academic authority contextualises the Return Theory framework within an established tradition of African thought. Target partnership: peer review of the Return Theory framework paper and contribution to the scholarly contextualisation of Igbo cosmological sources used in the programme curriculum. |
Independent evaluation does not begin when funding arrives. It begins now, with the design of the instruments and the documentation of the framework. The stages below represent a planned four-year journey from pre-cohort framework design to published, peer-reviewed evidence.
These are not aspirations. They are documented commitments that funders can hold us to. They are published here before the first cohort runs, so that the standard is set by us — not negotiated after the fact.
Every cohort produces a written outcome report within 60 days of completion. Shared with all contributing funders. Published publicly on the Omenala website. Contains aggregate quantitative data, anonymised testimony, and an honest assessment section — including findings we did not expect and findings that challenge our theory of change.
Full annual impact report published every year, covering all cohorts, all outcome domains, longitudinal alumni data, University partnership progress, and the state of the Return Theory evidence base. Submitted to all funders and published on the website within 90 days of year end. Not edited for positive spin. Available to the public, not only to funders.
All bespoke instruments (CIII, Dragon Behaviour Map, Narrative Analysis rubric) are available to funders, academic partners, and peer reviewers on request. Adaptation rationales are documented and available. We welcome critical scrutiny of our measurement choices. Instruments that are challenged and improved are more credible, not less.
The simplest and most honest metric we track: the percentage of Leader Program participants who complete their Courage Contract by the retreat. Binary, public, cohort-level. It will appear in every annual report, including in years where the rate is lower than we hoped. Simple metrics that are always published build more trust than sophisticated metrics that appear selectively.
We are building a measurement framework because we believe in what we are doing — and because that belief is worth very little without evidence. When the data is good, we will say so clearly. When it is complicated, we will say so honestly. When it challenges our assumptions, we will publish it anyway. That is the only standard of rigour that means anything.