TB Stigma in the UK: Patients Experiences and Everyday Responses

Public understanding of tuberculosis (TB) is shaped by sociocultural norms, educational background, and personal experiences. Misconceptions about TB transmission, disease severity, and treatment side effects are widespread, contributing to stigma and fear of social rejection. Such stigma can lead individuals to conceal their diagnosis, limiting access to support, engagement with healthcare, and overall health literacy. TB-related stigma is recognised as a significant barrier to ending the global TB epidemic, affecting quality of life and access to care. Yet in high-income, low-incidence (HILI) countries like the UK, its prevalence, influence, and lived impact remain largely unexplored. Where stigma appears in research, it is often treated as an emerging theme, leaving a critical gap in understanding how individuals with TB, or those caring or supporting them, experience and respond to it. This study adopts a Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) approach to examine TB-related stigma in depth. CGT allows the research to explore how people living with TB make sense of, interpret, negotiate, and resist stigma, capturing the dynamic and contextual ways it shapes their lives, identities, and interactions with healthcare systems. By investigating these meaning-making processes, the study aims to illuminate how stigma operates in the UK, providing insights to inform future stigma-reduction interventions, communication strategies, and supportive healthcare practices, ultimately benefiting patients, communities, and the NHS.