The NHS Race and Health Observatory is an independent body set up to provide evidenced recommendations in relation to health and racial inequality. It is hosted by the NHS Confederation and supported by NHS England. The observatory's chosen speakers challenged many of the report's conclusions, including its assertion that: "The evidence clearly suggests that ethnicity is not the major driver of health inequalities in the UK but deprivation, geography and differential exposure to key risk factors." Sir Michael Marmot, director of the Institute of Health Equity at University College London, said that on mortality rates in the UK, the impact of deprivation was the same for each ethnic group. It meant that deprivation alone did not explain the wide disparity in health outcomes. Race was a key factor, he said.