• Skip to content
  • Skip to footer
  • Accessibility options
University of Brighton
  • About us
  • Business and
    employers
  • Alumni and
    supporters
  • For
    students
  • For
    staff
  • Accessibility
    options
Open menu
Home
Home
  • Close
  • Study here
    • Meet us
    • Open days
    • Virtual tours
    • Upcoming events
    • Applicant days
    • Meet us in your country
    • Chat to our students
    • Ask us a question
    • Order a prospectus
    • Our campuses
    • Our four campuses
    • Accommodation options
    • Our halls
    • Helping you find a home
    • What you can study
    • Find a course
    • Full A-Z course list
    • Explore our subjects
    • Our academic departments
    • How to study with us
    • Undergraduate application process
    • Postgraduate application process
    • International student application process
    • Apprenticeships
    • Applying through Clearing
    • Transfer from another university
    • Fees and financial support
    • Undergraduate finance
    • Postgraduate finance
    • Our funding and support options
    • Supporting you
    • Your wellbeing
    • Student support and guidance tutors
    • Study skills support
    • Careers and employability
  • Research
    • Research and knowledge exchange
    • Research and knowledge exchange organisation
    • The Global Challenges
    • Centres of Research Excellence (COREs)
    • Research Excellence Groups (REGs)
    • Our research database
    • Information for business
    • Community University Partnership Programme (CUPP)
    • Postgraduate research degrees
    • PhD research disciplines and programmes
    • PhD funding opportunities and studentships
    • How to apply for your PhD
    • Research environment
    • Investing in research careers
    • Strategic plan
    • Research concordat
    • News, events, publications and films
    • Featured research and knowledge exchange projects
    • Research and knowledge exchange news
    • Inaugural lectures
    • Research and knowledge exchange publications and films
    • Academic staff search
  • About us
  • Business and employers
  • Alumni, supporters and giving
  • Current students
  • Staff
  • Accessibility
Search our site
Pride ballons in rainbow colours at Pride celebration, courtesy of Gagnonm and Pixabay
Research and knowledge exchange
  • Postgraduate research degrees
  • Research features
  • Research organisation
  • Research environment
  • Research features
    • Research features
    • Films and publications
    • News
    • project-archive
    • R&E Newsletters
  • Features
    • Features
    • Blood pressure targets for the very elderly: preventing strokes and heart attacks in the over 80s
    • Brighton Waste House
    • Cannibalism in early humans: the calorific significance of human cannibalism in the Palaeolithic era
    • Childhood asthma and eczema treatment: a personalised approach
    • Coexistence with carnivores: how do we better understand inter-relationships between humans and wild carnivores?
    • Communities of Practice and Value Creation Frameworks: how do we learn from each other?
    • Crowd safety: revolutionising crowd management through a better understanding of the psychology of crowds
    • Delayed umbilical cord clamping: research into the health benefits to babies
    • Design history research: how we help to develop a greater understanding of our global cultural heritage
    • Diabetes patient care: providing life-saving therapy and improved quality of life
    • Faecal-borne diseases: research provides life-saving advances in disease control
    • Food recycling: waste solutions through city-scale food recycling policy are developed and tested in China
    • Football4Peace...Rugby4Peace: how sport is bringing intercultural cooperation to communities in conflict
    • Graphic novel research: changing attitudes to reading and publishing
    • Hepatitis C: eliminating the virus among vulnerable communities of drug users and homeless people
    • Heritage technology: helping to augment museum collections and enliven cultural engagement
    • Humanitarian business: our innovation strategy is helping disaster-affected third world relief funds
    • Inclusive arts practice: reaching new understandings of what is truly inclusive
    • LGBTI health care: challenging and improving the inequality in care
    • Liver disease research: medical device innovation and commercialisation to combat liver disease
    • ONSIDE teacher mentoring: re-envisioning mentoring to promote professional development and wellbeing
    • Our research impact
    • Photography research: visualising history from the margins
    • Physiotherapy private practice: raising standards across the UK
    • Politics and arts: how media and visual communication can bring about social and political change
    • Practice-led research: developing the impact of research conducted through art and design practice
    • PrefHER: putting patient choice and preferences at the forefront of breast cancer management
    • Research impact
    • Resilience for social justice: research is bringing an inclusive revolution in mental health
    • Screen archives: fostering audiences for our shared film heritage through archive development and research
    • Sexual health research: understanding HIV and improving health among men who have sex with men
    • Sports science: protecting the health of Paralympic, Olympic and World Cup competitors
    • Stonehenge, where were the stones from? Geochemical fingerprinting research reveals origins of the sarsen stones
    • Street triage and mental health: giving a voice to those in crisis
    • Superfused Brighton: research into how creative and media innovation drives the digital economy
    • Sustainable tourism: collaborative research methodologies to transform the tourism sector
    • The Design Archives: international collections bring partners on board and develop innovative engagement
    • The Shakespeare Hut: forgotten and marginalised histories of theatre heritage
    • Can stress cause cancer? Research examines the relationship between stress and cancer
    • Urban agriculture research: increasing food production for city sustainability
    • Water supply research: providing better, cleaner, cheaper water
  • LGBTI health care: challenging and improving the inequality in care

LGBTI health care: challenging and improving the inequality in care for LGBTI communities

Historically, LGBTI populations across Europe have experienced significant health inequalities both in terms of poorer health outcomes and negative experiences of accessing healthcare compared to non-LGBTI populations. For some, these experiences have translated into a risk of depression, suicide and self-harm, violence, substance misuse and HIV infection.  

Research led by the University of Brighton has tackled these health inequalities within the LGBTI community, generating changes in policy and health education at local, national and European levels. A series of major projects investigated both structural and causal effects of inequalities in healthcare and services for LGBTI citizens, uncovering and dealing with barriers including access to health care, health inequalities, definitions, healthcare systems and classification methods as well as adequate awareness of needs amongst healthcare professionals.  

These projects aimed to improve understanding of how best to reduce specific health inequalities experienced by LGBTI people. Using mixed methods approaches and co-production with end-users and partners across Europe, researchers examined interactions between lived experience, policy and clinical practice and how these affect physical and mental health and well-being of individuals identifying as LGBTI in the UK and Europe.  

Find out more about our research with and for LGBTI communities at our Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender

Health4LGBTI - the first-ever global analysis of LGBTI health inequalities

As a result of a successful tender, University of Brighton researchers led two of five research work packages for the European Parliament’s Health4LGBTI project – a two-year EU-funded project in collaboration with partners in six EU countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy, Lithuania, Poland and the UK).  Health4LGBTI completed the first-ever global analysis of LGBTI health inequalities in LGBTI scientific literature, highlighting the existence of key barriers and discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics of LGBTI people.

The review found that LGBTI people are more likely to experience health inequalities due to heteronormativity or heterosexism, minority stress, experiences of victimisation and discrimination, compounded by stigma. Inequalities pertaining to LGBTI health(care) vary depending on gender, age, income and disability as well as between LGBTI groupings. Gaps in the literature remain around how these factors intersect to influence health, with further large-scale research needed particularly regarding trans and intersex people. 

The study also focused on the barriers faced by health professionals when providing care and uncovered a lack of cultural competence concerning the needs of LGBTI people, a lack of awareness relating to gender identity, and a lack of specialist mental health and counselling services. This was supported by focus groups across the six EU partner countries and showed that three assumptions about LGBTI-related healthcare held by HCPs underpinned discrimination. Firstly, that patients are heterosexual, cisgender, and non-intersex by default; secondly that LGBTI people do not experience significant problems due to their sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or sex characteristics; and, thirdly that a person’s LGBTI subjectivity is mostly irrelevant for healthcare.  

These projects recognised that a key structural challenge and primary reason that LGBTI people experience inequalities in health is due to invisibility in health systems including poor data or no data. It consequently advocates for better data collection by health professionals including how systems can record more appropriate recognition of sexual orientation and gender identity. This can help ensure LGBTI people are afforded dignity, respect, and appropriate care. 

The project has subsequently led to further, significant improvements in training programmes for health professionals. The Health4LGBTI project team developed a comprehensive training programme that focuses on knowledge, attitudes and skills of healthcare professionals when providing healthcare to LGBTI people and accounted for the needs of diverse European settings. 

The results of the Health4LGBTI research have been used by the UK Parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee inquiry into health care provisions for LGBT communities in October 2018 and subsequently fed into the LGBT Action Plan 2018 from the Government Office. In July 2020, the Ministry of Health in Portugal launched a National Health Strategy for LGBTI people with an inaugural programme dedicated to Health promotion of transgender and intersex people underpinned by Health4LGBTI including a national roll out of the training materials developed by the project.

 

 

Back to top
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn icon

Contact us

University of Brighton
Mithras House
Lewes Road
Brighton
BN2 4AT

Main switchboard 01273 600900

Course enquiries

Sign up for updates

University contacts

Report a problem with this page

Quick links Quick links

  • Courses
  • Open days
  • Order a prospectus
  • Academic departments
  • Academic staff
  • Professional services departments
  • Jobs
  • Privacy and cookie policy
  • Accessibility statement
  • Libraries
  • Term dates
  • Maps
  • Graduation
  • Site information
  • Online shop
  • COVID-19
  • The Student Contract

Information for Information for

  • Current students
  • International students
  • Media/press
  • Careers advisers/teachers
  • Parents/carers
  • Business/employers
  • Alumni/supporters
  • Suppliers
  • Local residents