Inclusive Healthcare For All

Joanne Lockwood is joined by Ellen Edenbrow to examine what inclusive healthcare looks like in practice, and why inclusion and diversity work in health and social care is far more than performative activity. They discuss how small but deliberate changes in communication—asking open questions, avoiding assumptions, and using respectful language—can build trust and improve outcomes for patients.

Ellen shares insights from launching Inclusive Health with their wife, a doctor, bringing specialist inclusion training into healthcare settings. The conversation explores barriers people face when accessing care, including fear and mistrust driven by identity-based exclusion, and how budget cuts and negative media narratives can undermine progress.

Through personal stories, Joanne and Ellen highlight the lived realities for trans and non-binary people navigating healthcare and public spaces, including misgendering, assumptions in clinical settings, and the emotional toll of persistent scrutiny. They also touch on broader intersectional examples—such as accessibility and disability analogies, race and COVID-era disparities, and targeted health initiatives—showing how inclusive practice benefits everyone.

The episode closes with a clear call to action: allyship and proactive engagement matter, and inclusive healthcare practices can be life-saving by helping people feel safe enough to seek help when they need it.

One-sentence summary

Ellen believes that being seen—properly, gently, without assumption—can save lives, and she refuses to accept a healthcare system where anyone has to feel afraid to ask for help.

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Synopsis

Ellen Edenbrow is someone who has always known themselves, even before language caught up. From being the child who reached for a Buzz Lightyear T‑shirt instead of a dress, to coming out young, to recognising their non-binary identity during the enforced stillness of COVID, Ellen describes a life shaped not by trend but by truth. They talk about being part of a “0.5%” — a reminder that most people will never feel what it’s like to move through the world hyper-aware of how they are perceived, to rehearse conversations before booking a holiday, to brace for a title on a phone call. Their journey into inclusion work wasn’t strategic. It was lived. It was paying privately for top surgery because their mental health couldn’t wait. It was having to justify their own understanding of themselves to a stranger with a clipboard. It was booking accommodation with subtle signals just to test whether they’d be safe.

What Ellen is trying to change is simple and enormous at once: they want healthcare to feel safe. Not performatively welcoming, not rainbow-badged without substance, but grounded in careful questions, thoughtful language and human dignity. They believe inclusive practice isn’t decorative — it is preventative. It builds trust so that when someone feels “a lump or a bump or a worry,” they come back. They speak about their wife’s experience with the BRCA gene and preventative surgery as proof that targeted outreach saves families from grief. For Ellen, inclusive healthcare is not ideology. It is the difference between silence and survival, between fear and an early appointment, between being tolerated and being truly seen.

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10 Small, digestible concepts for easy learning

1. Healthcare is at its best when people trust it enough to return.

Inclusion isn’t a gesture; it’s what makes someone come back before it’s too late.

2. Identity should never be a barrier to care.

Who you are shouldn’t increase the cost of accessing your own health.

3. A simple question can change a diagnosis.

Open, non-judgemental curiosity is often the missing clinical tool.

4. Being “minority” doesn’t mean being marginal.

Small populations still deserve systems built with them in mind.

5. Allyship is often invisible but deeply felt.

A small signal of safety can carry lifelong impact.

6. Most people don’t want special treatment — just fair treatment.

Inclusion is about removing friction, not adding favour.

7. Prevention is an inclusion issue.

Targeted screening and outreach protect families, not just individuals.

8. Language is often the first doorway to dignity.

A title, a pronoun, a careless assumption can either close or open trust.

9. Courage shouldn’t be required to go to the GP.

Yet for many, it still is.

10. You can respect what you don’t fully understand.

Understanding grows; respect can come first.

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The “why” in the story

What they believe is true about people

Ellen believes most people want to do good. They believe we share more than divides us — that everyone wants health, time, love, safety. They believe bravery flourishes when people are allowed to be fully themselves.

What they cannot unsee

They cannot unsee the quiet fear in marginalised patients. They cannot unsee the way misgendering lands when someone is lying on a trolley. They cannot unsee how outreach programmes, like BRCA gene screening, quite literally prevent funerals.

What they are no longer willing to tolerate

They are no longer willing to accept that inclusive practice is dismissed as “woke paperwork.” They refuse to tolerate healthcare settings where someone must calculate whether it’s safe to disclose who they are before discussing their symptoms.

What they are trying to build instead

They are building healthcare cultures where asking the right question is normal, where dignity extends to partners at bedsides, where prevention is tailored, and where no one has to shrink themselves in a hospital corridor.

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Narrative structure

1. The trigger

COVID created stillness. In the quiet of four walls, Ellen asked, “Who am I to the world?” That introspection deepened their commitment to living honestly — and to creating systems where others don’t have to hide. Personal experiences of surgery, psychiatric assessment, and witnessing family ableism in hospice care sharpened that resolve.

2. The tension

They live in a time where their identity is publicly debated. Budgets are cut. Language is weaponised. Headlines are loud. Meanwhile, they carry the daily, private weight of navigating toilets, travel routes, hospitality, GP calls — always calculating risk.

3. The insight

Inclusion is not abstract. It is economic, emotional and existential. It saves money. It saves relationships. It saves lives. Often it is as small as the tone of a question: “Are you sexually active? Who do you sleep with?”

4. The pivot

Ellen chose not just to survive the system but to enter it as a reformer — launching Inclusive Health with their doctor wife to bring lived experience and clinical insight together. They stopped waiting for change and decided to train those who shape patient experiences.

5. The destination

A healthcare environment where no one rehearses their identity before an appointment. Where families feel respected at end of life. Where difference is ordinary. Where things feel quieter — not because people are silenced, but because fear is.

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Five key takeaways and learning points

1. Inclusion builds early intervention.

When people trust care providers, they seek help sooner — which can be lifesaving.

2. Small signals shape big decisions.

A badge, a bottle of Prosecco, the right form of address — these moments create psychological safety.

3. Assumptions cost time and harm care.

Avoiding “awkward” questions can compromise accurate diagnosis and treatment.

4. Targeted support protects everyone.

Genetic screening in specific communities benefits entire family systems, not just individuals.

5. Noise in the media doesn’t reflect effort on the ground.

Many healthcare professionals are quietly working towards fairness despite political backlash.

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Ten distinct ideas explained

1. Trust as infrastructure

Trust is as vital as equipment. Without it, patients delay, withhold, or disappear.

2. Preventative dignity

Screening programmes tailored to communities prevent both disease and grief.

3. The emotional labour of visibility

Constantly gauging safety drains energy long before any clinical interaction begins.

4. The power of open questions

Non-assuming language shifts consultations from guesswork to precision.

5. Intersectionality in practice

Inclusion isn’t single-issue; it considers carers, faith, age, disability, sexuality and more at once.

6. Representation normalises humanity

Seeing LGBTQ+ clinicians or trainers reduces perceived threat and increases comfort.

7. Gendered socialisation and space

How people are taught to occupy space affects how safe and validated they feel.

8. End-of-life dignity

Misrecognising a partner at a bedside compounds grief.

9. Respect without full understanding

You do not need complete knowledge of someone’s identity to honour it.

10. Allyship as quiet influence

Many acts of inclusion ripple invisibly, shaping outcomes far beyond the moment.

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How people should change as a result

1. Think

• Move from “Is this necessary?” to “Who might avoid care because we didn’t think of this?”
• See inclusion as preventative medicine, not political activism.
• Understand that neutrality often maintains existing harm.
• Recognise that small population groups still experience healthcare daily.

2. Feel

• Shift from defensiveness to curiosity.
• Move from fatigue at headlines to compassion for lived impact.
• Replace fear of “getting it wrong” with willingness to try.
• Feel responsibility rather than guilt.

3. Act

• Ask open, respectful questions rather than making assumptions.
• Review forms and remove unnecessary titles or gendered language.
• Invite speakers with lived experience into your workplace — beyond awareness days.
• Ensure partners and carers are acknowledged appropriately in care settings.
• Support targeted health outreach programmes rather than questioning their legitimacy.
• Signal safety visibly and back it up with training.
• When you witness misgendering or assumptions, gently correct it in the moment.

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One thing to remember

Inclusion in healthcare isn’t decoration — it’s the difference between fear and survival.