Table 1.

Summary and comparison of timescales for stigma and health research

	Historical context	Human development	Stigma course
Concept	The extent to which and ways in which statuses are stigmatized change over time; thus, the impact of stigma on health and processes linking stigma with health change over time	The ways in which individuals experience stigma and the extent to which stigma impacts health change across the lifespan	The ways in which individuals experience stigma and the extent to which stigma impacts health change in relation to the course of stigmatized statuses
Examples	Declines in sexual diversity stigma in the second half of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first century	Childhood and adolescence are sensitive periods, when experiences of stigma have particularly profound effects on health and development	People living with HIV experience higher internalized stigma immediately following HIV diagnosis
	Emergence of HIV-related stigma in the 1980s and COVID-19 stigma in the 2020s	According to the weathering hypothesis, older adults are vulnerable to the effects of accumulated stress due to stigma	Individuals who enter recovery from substance use disorders (SUDs) replace a stigmatized identity (‘addict’) with a valued identity (‘person in recovery’)
Research questions	How do experiences of stigma differ within various historical contexts?	How do experiences of stigma evolve across the life course?	How do experiences of stigma change alongside the course of stigmatized statuses, including status gains and losses?
	During which social change contexts is stigma most harmful to health?	At which developmental stages are individuals most vulnerable to the harmful effects of stigma on health?	As individuals gain and lose stigmatized statuses, when are they most vulnerable to the impacts of stigma?
	When and how do pathways linking stigma with health change over time?	For how long do experiences of stigma impact health?
Research methods	Multilevel methods	Life course histories	Mixture modelling
	Longitudinal policy analysis	Longitudinal studies	Moderation analyses
		Integrative data analysis
Implications for interventions	During times when stigma is not changing at structural or individual levels, interventions that promote resilience to stigma among individuals with stigmatized statuses might be most effective	Deliver stigma interventions during stages of human development when individuals are most vulnerable to stigma	Address internalized stigma in the weeks and months following the development of a new stigmatized status
	During times when stigma is changing at structural and/or individual levels, stigma reduction might be most effective	Stigma interventions delivered early in life might promote well-being later in life	Individuals might continue to be impacted by stigma even after they have lost a stigmatized status
		Intervention strategies should be leveraged to address the cumulative effects of experienced and anticipated stigma among people who have lived with stigmatized statuses for long periods of time