Stigma as a barrier to quality and safety in health care: Mobilizing quality standards to reduce stigma in health care settings.
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Stigma in health care settings undermines prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and successful health outcomes.Therefore, addressing stigma is fundamental to delivering quality and safe health care.One way to reduce stigma in health care settings is to mobilize national health care quality standards.In this article, we consider how health care quality standards might be mobilized to reduce stigma through a policy review of stigma reduction strategies in quality standards across six international jurisdictions and four socioecological levels of stigma: individual, interpersonal, organizational and institutional, and structural.Based on this review, we suggest some key components that could and should be incorporated in health care quality standards to monitor and reduce stigma in health care settings. Clinical Impact StatementThis article considers how health care quality standards can be mobilized to reduce stigma in health care settings across four levels: individual, interpersonal, organizational, or structural.Based on a policy review of health care quality standards across six countries, we make recommendations to strengthen standards in ways that can better monitor and combat stigma in health care.By incorporating quality standards around stigma, health care providers will be obliged to take action to reduce its instance in their services.
Source: Stigma and Health
DOI: 10.1037/sah0000727
Authors: Sean Mulcahy, Carla Treloar, Kate Seear
Institutions: UNSW Sydney, Deakin University
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7223230570