The UK sees 13 million skin appointments a year. The tools were not built for everyone in them. All Shades Count gives councils, NHS partners and employers a ready-to-run programme that closes the gap — in your community, with your people.
Priority areas
All Shades Count is designed to scale across any UK local authority. Priority areas include London boroughs with the highest ethnically diverse populations — Newham, Tower Hamlets, Brent, Hackney, Lambeth, Croydon, Southwark, Harrow, Redbridge and Ealing — as well as Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Leicester and Bradford.
Frequently asked questions
What is All Shades Count?
All Shades Count is a community-led skin health and data programme from Symptom Spectrum Ltd, designed for UK councils, NHS Trusts and Integrated Care Systems. It delivers clinician-supervised skin health sessions in trusted community venues, recruits and pays local Health Pioneers, and builds a governed, community-consented skin health dataset that helps AI and clinical tools work safely across the full range of skin tones.
Why do ethnically diverse communities face skin health inequalities in the UK?
AI diagnostic tools and medical training images are heavily weighted towards lighter skin tones — 89.8% of AI-generated dermatology images depict light skin. This means diagnostic tools perform less accurately on darker skin tones, contributing to delayed or missed diagnoses for ethnically diverse communities. All Shades Count addresses this by building a representative, community-consented dataset and a pre-classification layer that works across the full range of skin tones.
How can a council commission All Shades Count?
Councils can book a briefing through the All Shades Count website. A pilot can be scoped to a specific borough footprint, aligned with Public Sector Equality Duty and NHS Core20PLUS5 commitments, and delivered in trusted community venues with clinician supervision and a commissioner equity report.
What is a Health Pioneer?
A Health Pioneer is a local resident recruited, trained and paid to lead skin health engagement in their own community. No clinical training is required. Pioneers gain certified health literacy skills, represent their community in a national programme and contribute to data that improves care for people who look like them.
How does All Shades Count protect community data?
All data is collected with community consent under UK GDPR, with Data Protection Impact Assessments for high-risk processing, encryption of identifiable health data in transit and at rest, and NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit alignment. Commissioners receive anonymised, aggregated outputs only. No raw identifiable records are shared.
Which areas does All Shades Count operate in?
All Shades Count is designed to scale across any UK local authority area. Priority areas include London boroughs with the highest ethnically diverse populations — including Newham, Tower Hamlets, Brent, Hackney, Lambeth and Croydon — as well as Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Leicester and Bradford.
Can employers partner with All Shades Count?
Yes. Employers with ethnically diverse workforces can commission workplace skin health days, generating ESG and social value evidence alongside meaningful health outcomes for their teams.
What is the OurSkin Spectrum initiative?
OurSkin Spectrum® is a registered trademark of Symptom Spectrum Ltd. It is the parent initiative under which All Shades Count operates. Its mission is to ensure that skin health tools, data and care work safely and equitably across the full range of skin tones.