Creative Health and LGBT+ Communities: Building Inclusive Pathways to Care
We recently submitted a response to the NHS’s LGBT+ health evidence review, highlighting the role that creative health can play in tackling health inequalities. In this blog we highlight some of the points we raised in our evidence submission.
Overview
LGBT+ communities continue to face significant barriers to care, with research showing that one in seven LGBT+ people avoid medical treatment altogether due to fear of discrimination. This lack of trust in mainstream services is deeply concerning, but creative health offers a different way forward. Through creative hubs, festivals, peer-led initiatives, and therapeutic practices, creative health creates safe, culturally relevant spaces that support wellbeing, reduce isolation, tackle clinical outcomes, and open new pathways into care.
Creative Hubs as Alternatives Health Spaces
Creative hubs are emerging as trusted alternatives to clinical settings. Rather than replicating traditional healthcare environments, they invite LGBT+ people into spaces built around community, culture, and belonging. Initiatives like Queer Care Camp and Rainbow Mind highlight the power of creative spaces to act as experiential health settings, where collective creativity fosters identity, belonging, and improved mental wellbeing. Importantly, it is vital to recognise diversity within LGBT+ communities. Research shows that trans and non-binary people of colour, and bisexual people, face unique barriers. Therefore, truly inclusive hubs must be designed with these intersecting identities in mind – offering cultural relevance and safety that mainstream services too often overlook. We also commended QueerCircle for demonstrating best practice in mapping creative health projects and sites specifically for LGBT+ participants.
Creative Promotion and Prevention
Creative approaches also strengthen health promotion. In our evidence submission, we presented a number of examples. The NIHR SPHR “Moving Spaces” zine, co-produced with LGBTQIA+ young people, reimagines physical activity spaces as joyful and safe, helping to prevent obesity and diabetes. Organisations such as The Love Tank use exhibitions, podcasts, and magazines to address health concerns such as reducing HIV stigma and improving uptake of preventative care. Festivals like Out and Wild integrate wellness activities into cultural celebrations, widening the reach of preventative health messages.
Supporting Clinical Conditions
LGBT+ individuals are at higher risk of having certain health conditions, due to more exposure to minority stress, higher rates of mental ill-health and the consequential engagement in unhealthy (i.e., coping) behaviours, including as smoking, drugs and alcohol consumption. The key areas that we focused on in our evidence submission were:
- COPD and Asthma
- Cardiovascular Disease and Hypertension
- Musculoskeletal + Chronic Pain Conditions
We responded by presenting a range of evidence on how creative health responds to these conditions, using examples from our Creative Health at a Glance resource. These examples show that creative health not only builds trust but also delivers measurable clinical impact.
Rethinking “Healthcare”
Our response also emphasised that LGBT+ communities can sometimes conceptualise health differently. Evidence from the Queering Creative Health evaluation shows that wellbeing is seen as relational, non-linear, and co-created through care and connection. Creative spaces like Queercircle demonstrate how health can be nurtured outside conventional biomedical framings, through safe environments where people can rest, grieve, and imagine new possibilities.
We signposted tools to make healthcare more compatible and affirming for LGBT+ individuals, including the Creative Health Communication Framework, Tilsen’s Queering Your Therapy Practice, and Creative Arts Therapies and the LGBTQ Community: Theory and Practice.
By embedding co-production and queer-informed approaches, NHS and public health planning can become more inclusive and culturally responsive.
What Needs to Happen Next
For creative health to fully address LGBT+ health inequalities, we identified four key actions aa being vital:
- Visibility and infrastructure: To realise the full potential of creative hubs as alternative health access points, greater recognition, mapping and signposting are required, ensuring that LGBT+ people across diverse identities can find spaces where they feel safe, affirmed, and supported.
- Investment into LGBT+ creative health promotions: taking a creative and LGBT+ affirming approach to health promotion, health leaders are able to prevent unhealthy behaviours and health inequalities, improve engagement with clinical services, and impact the wellbeing of LGBT+ communities.
- NHS Integration: NHS systems can follow best practice examples such as Gloucestershire ICB, which has embedded creative health into clinical pathways and developed a data dashboard to identify disengaged or hard-to-reach groups.
- Cultural responsiveness: Co-produced, queer-informed approaches ensure services align with lived realities. By adopting these alternative views, healthcare can become more culturally responsive, ethically grounded, and genuinely inclusive of LGBT+ communities.
Our submission to the inquiry makes clear that creative health is not an “add-on.” It is an essential means of ensuring that LGBT+ people have access to care that is safe, affirming, and effective. To find out more, you can read our submission here.
