How people with tuberculosis experience and respond to stigma in the UK
Studies how people with tuberculosis experience and respond to stigma.
Plain-language title generated from the registry record
Registry title: TB Stigma in the UK: Patients Experiences and Everyday Responses
Key facts
- Where
- Bournemouth, United KingdomSee the site
Where in United Kingdom
- University Hospitals DorsetBournemouth, United KingdomNo longer taking part
Questions to ask the study team
- How often do I need to come in, and for how long each time?
- Are travel costs paid?
- Can I keep my own doctor?
- What happens if I want to stop?
Trial details
- Who runs it
- Bournemouth University
- Trial code
- NCT07609264
- Record updated
- 27 May 2026
- Original description
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.Read full original descriptionShow less
Making Sense of Tuberculosis (TB) Related Stigma in a Low-incidence Area of 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.
Inclusion: Aged 18 or over at start of study; Resident in rural or coastal areas within South or Southwest England; Diagnosed with either active or latent TB within the last 10 years.
Exclusion: Under 18 years of age; Lacks mental capacity or is unwilling to consent to participate in the study; Lives in an area of TB high-incidence (above 10 cases/100,000 population) or outside of rural and coastal areas of South/Southwest England.
This study seeks participants who have been diagnosed with pulmonary TB, extrapulmonary TB, latent TB infection (LTBI), and drug sensitive or drug resistant TB within the last 10 years. Participants may have different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds and will be resident within a pre-defined TB low-incidence coastal/rural area of the UK.