Valerie Earnshaw, PhD

Earnshaw is social psychologist and associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Delaware.

Tell us a bit about your background: What is your area of research? What is your most recent journal-editing experience?

I am a social psychologist and associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Delaware. My research focuses on stigma and health inequities, particularly in substance use disorders, HIV, and mental health. Like many stigma and health researchers, my work is highly interdisciplinary. I have bridged stigma theory from psychology, sociology, and anthropology with research on disease prevention and treatment in public health and medicine. Much of my work is guided by the principles of community-based participatory research and involves partnerships with national and local organizations. My goal is to do research that both advances our fundamental understanding of stigma and health and can ultimately be applied to address stigma and improve health. As examples, I have worked on advancing theory on stigma and time, methods for stigma research, and interventions to support disclosure processes among people with stigmatized health conditions.

I have served on the editorial boards of Stigma and Health and AIDS and Behavior. I was a guest editor of BMC Medicine’s special issue on stigma and global health. Most recently, I served with Annie Fox as guest editor of Stigma and Health’s special issue on stigma and time. I consider Stigma and Health to be my intellectual home. When Stigma and Health was introduced in 2015 with Patrick Corrigan as editor-in-chief, I knew that the scholarship published in the journal would both deepen our understanding of stigma and health and expand our ability to address stigma and close health inequities. Since then, I have been a dedicated reader of, submitted my best scholarship to, enjoyed reviewing articles for, and felt fortunate to serve as a guest editor for a special issue of the journal. I am deeply committed to the success of Stigma and Health, and it is an honor to follow Patrick Corrigan as the journal’s next editor.

Why is this journal important for the field? What is its relevance to society/public health? What are the hot issues in your area right now? 

In the United States and across much of the globe, we find ourselves in a historical moment of dramatic social change. Stigma associated with many social statuses (e.g., transphobia, homophobia, racism, xenophobia, sexism) is changing rapidly, often regressively, and at all social–ecological levels. Theorists have called dramatic social change “painful and confusing” for individuals (de la Sablonnière, 2017, p. 12), and evidence suggests that these changes are likely harmful to the health of stigmatized populations.

In this moment, I have been asking myself the same fundamental question that Patrick Corrigan posed in his inaugural editorial of Stigma and Health: “What role does research have for social justice?” (Corrigan, 2016, p. 1). Stigma and Health has answered this question by publishing scholarship that is highly responsive to current events, documents the impacts of stigma on health, and seeks to uncover intervention strategies to address stigma and promote health. As examples, the journal has published research documenting structural stigma in mental health–related bills during the first Trump administration (Conley, 2021), investigating the health impacts of racial discrimination on Asians and Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic (Lee & Waters, 2021), and identifying supports to mitigate the impact of stigma on transgender and gender diverse populations (Wall et al., 2022). In the years ahead, Stigma and Health will continue to do so.

What challenges, if any, lie ahead for the field and/or the journal?

Stigma and health researchers are currently facing extraordinary challenges. Due to recent executive orders in the United States (e.g., targeting diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs; gender ideology and gender-affirming care; foreign aid; and others), many of our colleagues have either lost funding or are under threat of losing funding for their research on stigma and health. This loss represents an arresting setback for stigma and health research, undermining our field’s ability to uncover drivers of stigma, characterize the impacts of stigma on health, develop innovative solutions to eliminate stigma and improve health, and advance methods to study stigma and health. The executive orders are also having a chilling censorial effect on our field. Words that are central to our scientific vocabulary, such as discrimination, prejudice, stereotypes, implicit bias, racism, and intersectionality, are being flagged by funding organizations and removed from public health agency websites. The Stigma and Discrimination Research Toolkit, which was launched during the COVID-19 pandemic and has served as a key resource for stigma and health researchers globally, has been removed from the National Institutes of Health’s website. Stigma and health researchers are struggling over how to communicate about our research in our grant applications, journal articles, websites, presentations, and classrooms.

And yet, stigma and health researchers are creative, intrepid, and resilient. Despite challenges to our funding, we will find ways to conduct our research. Some of our best scholarship has been conducted without funding or in partnership with non-federal funders. Despite challenges to our scientific vocabulary, we will continue to write and speak about our scholarship using the same words that stigma and health researchers have used for decades. These words are critically important to our field because they enable us to communicate accurately and precisely with each other as well as with scholars from other fields, clinicians, policymakers, and community leaders. In the face of more general challenges to science and academia, we will apply our own scholarship about resilience and resistance to support our scientific community as well as stigmatized populations. We have learned much about the power of empowerment, social support, adaptive coping, and other ways to promote well-being despite challenging sociostructural conditions. We have also learned, and continue to learn, about how to intervene in stigma at the individual, interpersonal, and structural levels. Now is the time to apply what we have learned.

Briefly, what are your main priorities? For example, how will you grow readership, what type of scholarship would you like to see in the journal, and what kind of content are you hoping to attract? 

In the wake of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Patrick Corrigan and I co-authored an editorial reaffirming Stigma and Health’s ongoing commitment to three priority areas (Earnshaw & Corrigan, 2025). Our top priority at Stigma and Health remains publishing research that informs real-world efforts to address stigma and right social injustice. To achieve this, we will continue to prioritize scholarship that is responsive to current events. Research on structural stigma, including the ways in which stigma is manifested within policies, cultural norms, and societal conditions, will be critically important in the coming years. We will continue to prioritize rigorous scholarship that aims to understand the outcomes of, protect people from, and change structural stigma. Finally, we are witnessing what intersectionality theorists have long observed: Stigma processes are synergistic and intertwined. We’ve seen that recent legislation is targeting multiple marginalized groups simultaneously (including sexual and gender minorities, people of color, women; Underhill et al., 2024). We will, therefore, continue to prioritize research on stigma and health that is conducted through an intersectional lens.

Do you have plans for a special issue or changes to the editorial process? Have you introduced or are you planning to introduce any changes?

Stigma and Health acts as a “town square” for stigma and health researchers. Stigma researchers come from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds and study different health conditions, and Stigma and Health is our place to connect to share our ideas for advancing our field. I have been brainstorming with our all-star team of incoming associate editors, including Annie Fox, Victoria Frye, Jelani Kerr, Bryan Kutner, Carmen Logie, Mark Manning, Kelly Moore, Rebecca Pearl, and Philip Yanos, about the role that Stigma and Health can play in hosting these conversations in the years ahead. We have discussed the possibility of introducing editorials in which we invite leading scholars to share their perspectives on priorities for stigma and health research, methods articles in which researchers can share innovative approaches for studying stigma and health, and special issues that are responsive to current events. As previously noted, we are also concerned that words frequently used by stigma researchers are being flagged by funders and public health organizations. We are brainstorming about how to clarify and fortify our scientific vocabulary. Please stay tuned!

Conley, D. L. (2021). The impact of structural stigma and other factors on state mental health legislative outcomes during the Trump administration. Stigma and Health, 6(4), 476–486. https://doi.org/10.1037/sah0000331   

Corrigan, P. W. (2016). Beating stigma? Augment good intentions with the critical eye. Stigma and Health, 1(1), 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1037/sah0000023  

de la Sablonnière, R. (2017). Toward a psychology of social change: A typology of social change. Frontiers in Psychology, 8(March), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00397opens in new window

Earnshaw, V. A., & Corrigan, P. W. (2025). Lighting the way forward. Stigma and Health, 10(1), 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1037/sah0000606

Lee, S., & Waters, S. F. (2021). Asians and Asian Americans’ experiences of racial discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic: Impacts on health outcomes and the buffering role of social support. Stigma and Health, 6(1), 70. https://doi.org/10.1037/sah0000275

Underhill, K., Earnshaw, V. A., & Nelson, K. M. (2024). The synergistic health threats of state laws targeting marginalized groups in the United States. American Journal of Public Health, 114(12), 1335–1343. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2024.307830opens in new window

Wall, C. S. J., Mason, K. L., Smout, S. A., O’Neill, K. A., Carrico, M. A., & Benotsch, E. G. (2022). Having a community helps: Environmental context influences the relationship between outness and psychological distress in transgender and gender diverse populations. Stigma and Health, 7(4), 414–422. https://doi.org/10.1037/sah0000409