Every June, rainbow flags appear in our streets, our workplaces, and across many of our public services. They bring colour, visibility, and celebration. And if I’m honest, thankfully this feels familiar, something we expect to see at this time of year.
But Pride has never been just about colour or celebration.
As I sat down to write this, I found myself wondering which way to lean, towards celebration, or towards challenge. The truth is, we cannot separate the two. Pride is both. It is joy and protest, visibility and resistance, progress and unfinished work.
And perhaps that’s where this feels most personal.
Because Pride asks more of us than simply acknowledging the evidence. As public health professionals, we are trained to understand data, outcomes and prevention. But Pride invites us, challenges us, to listen more closely to people’s lived experiences. To notice what it feels like to navigate the world when safety, acceptance and belonging cannot be taken for granted.
I have to admit, even writing the words ‘LGBTQ+ people’, feels uncomfortable, because it risks implying separation, as though we are talking about a group apart from everyone else. And yet, history reminds us that for many people, that separation was very real.
LGBTQ+ people have lived under the weight of criminalisation, stigma and fear. In the UK, same-sex relationships were once punishable by death, and later by imprisonment. Within many of our lifetimes, people were dismissed from jobs, excluded from institutions, or prevented from living openly because of who they were.
That is not distant history. It still echoes in the present. And this matters deeply for public health. We know that health is shaped by much more than healthcare. It is shaped by whether people feel safe, respected, and able to be themselves. It is shaped by whether they feel they belong. And for many LGBTQ+ people, those foundations have been, and in some cases still are, uneven.
We see it in the evidence: higher rates of mental ill health, barriers to accessing care, and experiences of discrimination that persist across the life course. These are not inherent outcomes of identity, they are the consequences of stigma, exclusion and minority stress.
In public health terms, prejudice is not abstract. It shows up in shorter lives, poorer health, and avoidable harm.
That is why Pride matters.
Because Pride began not as a celebration, but as a protest, a refusal to accept injustice. It is rooted in visibility, dignity and human rights. And it continues to remind us that progress is never accidental. It is achieved through courage, persistence and collective action.
The history of LGBTQ+ communities is, in part, a history of exclusion. For generations, people faced discrimination in law, in workplaces, in healthcare and within society more broadly. Many were forced to conceal their identities for fear of rejection, prejudice or worse. While the legal landscape has changed significantly, the impact of that history continues to shape lives today.
Public health research consistently shows that discrimination and stigma affect health outcomes. LGBTQ+ people experience higher rates of mental ill health, including anxiety, depression and self-harm, while many continue to report barriers to accessing appropriate healthcare and support. These outcomes are not caused by sexual orientation or gender identity themselves. Rather, they are often the result of unequal treatment, exclusion and minority stress.
This is one reason why Pride matters.
There is, of course, much to celebrate.
The legal and social progress we have seen across recent decades is significant and hard-won. More people are able to live openly and authentically. Rights have been secured that were once unimaginable. Behind each step forward are individuals and communities who organised, spoke out, and sometimes paid a very personal price for change.
But progress is not the same as completion.
Health inequalities persist. Experiences of discrimination remain. And in some areas, including debates around trans rights, the public conversation can feel increasingly polarised and, at times, unhelpfully harmful.
That is precisely why public health leadership matters now as much as ever. For me, Pride Month is a moment to return to our core purpose. Public health is, at its heart, a social justice movement. It is about creating the conditions in which everyone can live healthy, safe and fulfilling lives.
And that requires more than good intentions. It means standing alongside communities experiencing discrimination, not simply studying inequalities, but actively working to reduce them. It means designing services that are inclusive by default, shaped by lived experience and co-production. It means challenging stigma wherever it appears, including within our own systems. And it means using evidence not just to describe problems, but to drive meaningful change.
Perhaps most importantly, it means recognising something we don’t always articulate clearly enough in public health: belonging matters. Belonging is not a nice to have. It is not an optional extra once everything else is in place. It is fundamental to health and wellbeing. And if we allow ourselves a moment of hope, there is something else Pride teaches us.
Despite centuries of exclusion, LGBTQ+ communities have not only endured, they have created, led, advocated, supported one another, and helped reshape society for the better. The HIV epidemic showed us the extraordinary power of community activism, co-production, and challenging stigma. Principles that sit at the heart of modern public health practice.
If resilience were a public health intervention, we would be prescribing it widely and learning directly from this history.
While some of us might still worry about getting the language exactly right, perhaps what matters most is getting the values right: kindness, respect, humility, and a willingness to listen and to stand alongside others.
Pride is not a tick-box. It is not a campaign that comes and goes each June. It is an invitation to reflect:
Are our services truly inclusive, or simply well-intentioned?
Are we addressing root causes, or just describing them?
And are we using our leadership, quietly or boldly, to create change?
The title of this blog borrows from Jane Austen, but the message is a contemporary one. Prejudice still affects health. It still shapes opportunities. And it still creates barriers to wellbeing.
Yet Pride reminds us of something equally important: progress is possible.
This Pride Month, let us celebrate the courage of those who challenged discrimination, often at considerable personal cost. Let us recognise the contribution that LGBTQ+ communities continue to make to our society. And let us recommit ourselves to building a future in which everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, has the opportunity to live a healthy life and to thrive.
Because the story of Pride is still being written. And we have a role in shaping what comes next.
Pride and prejudice have always existed side by side. Our task is to keep shifting that balance, steadily, deliberately, and with purpose, towards a society where everyone, regardless of who they are or who they love, can live healthy, safe and connected lives.
That is not just a public health ambition.
It is a matter of fairness.
It is a matter of dignity.
And it is something I am Proud to make loud and clear.
