This case study demonstrates how LIGHT moved beyond generating evidence, helping shape the policies, strategic plans and guidelines that influence how TB services are designed and delivered. Across Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and Uganda, LIGHT partners worked closely with national TB programmes and other stakeholders to ensure that gender-responsive approaches were better reflected in TB policy and planning. Through mixed-methods research, participatory approaches, sustained engagement and technical input, LIGHT brought attention to how gender norms, age, and social context shape access to TB prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care — particularly for men, adolescents and young adults.
The case study also highlights the impact this work had. LIGHT evidence and engagement informed national strategic plans, guideline revisions, review processes, and data and monitoring discussions across partner countries. In Kenya, LIGHT helped strengthen the revised TB strategic plan by embedding human rights and gender-related barriers more explicitly within its guiding principles. In Uganda, LIGHT played a central role in shaping the new national strategic plan, including the Community, Rights and Gender thematic area, and helped ensure that practical activities such as male-friendly services, stigma reduction, targeted screening and survivor engagement were reflected in planning. In Nigeria, LIGHT contributed to mid- and end-term national strategic plan reviews, supported stronger sex disaggregation across TB data tools, and influenced thinking on community-led, male-targeted TB approaches. In Malawi, LIGHT informed revisions to national TB and leprosy guidelines so that gender was more clearly integrated within community rights and equity frameworks. Overall, the case study demonstrates that research has greater value when it is translated into policies and guidelines that shape real-world action. It shows how LIGHT helped move gender-responsive TB from a general aspiration to something more concrete, actionable and embedded within national TB responses.