Stigma in health facilities: Laura Nyblade and colleagues, published in BMC Medicine
If your organisation wants to reduce stigma but isn't sure where to start, this paper offers one of the clearest roadmaps available.
Drawing on 42 stigma reduction interventions from around the world, the authors identified six common approaches used to tackle stigma in healthcare settings:
Providing information about stigma and its impact on health
Building staff skills and confidence
Participatory learning and reflection
Meaningful contact with people who have lived experience
Empowerment approaches that help people challenge stigma
Structural and policy change within organisations
Perhaps most importantly, the review found that effective interventions rarely relied on a single strategy. Most combined multiple approaches, recognising that stigma is shaped not only by individual attitudes, but also by workplace culture, organisational systems and healthcare environments.
The authors also identified major gaps in the field. Few interventions targeted all staff within a facility, worked across multiple organisational levels, or addressed the policies, procedures and physical environments that can unintentionally reinforce stigma.
Why this matters
Many stigma reduction efforts still focus on education alone. This review suggests that lasting change requires a whole-of-facility approach that combines training, lived experience involvement, organisational leadership, policy change and supportive systems.
Action to take
Target all staff, including clinical and non-clinical workers
Work at both individual and structural levels
Involve people with lived and living experience as partners
Address multiple forms of stigma rather than tackling conditions in isolation
Review policies, procedures and physical spaces that may contribute to stigma
Build stigma reduction into routine quality improvement processes rather than treating it as a one-off project