Innovative models of care for LGBTQ+ older adults: a scoping review protocol

This study aims to identify and map innovative care models for LGBTQ+ older adults and characterise the supporting evidence base.

Older LGBTQ+ adults face persistent inequalities in health and social care, including discrimination, invisibility and barriers to appropriate support. As the population of openly LGBTQ+ older people grows, ensuring equitable and affirming provision has become increasingly urgent in the UK and beyond. In response, care models that may be considered innovative (whether newly developed, adapted for LGBTQ+ communities or applied in novel ways) have begun to emerge. However, no review has yet systematically mapped what is currently known about innovations in LGBTQ+ care and the evidence supporting them. This scoping review therefore aims to identify and map innovative care models for LGBTQ+ older adults and to characterise the supporting evidence base.

This scoping review will be conducted in accordance with Arksey and O'Malley's framework and reported using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) checklist. Evidence will be included where a care model or initiative is described or evaluated along with its implications for LGBTQ+ older people. For this review, care models are defined as organised approaches to care-that is, services, policies, practices (including training), initiatives or interventions-implemented in formal or informal care settings-such as residential care homes, housing with care schemes (eg, supported accommodation, retirement communities), domiciliary care, communities or informal long-term care arrangements. Use of the term 'innovation' will not be required for inclusion and will instead be coded by reviewers during charting. English-language sources of any design published between 2015 and 2025 will be included; sources without LGBTQ+ relevance, purely theoretical pieces, protocol papers and conference abstracts without full reports will be excluded. Searches will be conducted in Scopus, Social Science Premium Collection, CINAHL and PsycINFO, with grey literature identified through Overton. Additional searching of SCIE, Google Scholar, relevant third-sector resources and reference lists will be undertaken following source selection. After de-duplication, two reviewers will independently screen titles/abstracts and full texts, with disagreements resolved through discussion or consultation with a third reviewer. Data will be charted on author and year, country, source type, participants or source focus, intended beneficiary population, intervention/model/practice described, study design or document design, context/setting, methods, type of evidence, innovation basis, innovation level/domain, reviewer rationale for innovation coding, outcome or implementation indicators reported, main findings relevant to the review question and limitations of the study or evidence. Findings will be presented in tables and through narrative synthesis to map the models of care, their innovative features and the nature of the evidence base, and to identify implications for UK policy, practice and research.

As this review will use data from publicly available sources, ethical approval is not required. Findings will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publication, presentations and accessible outputs for relevant stakeholders, including community-facing materials where appropriate.