Health-related stigma remains a major barrier to improving health and well-being for vulnerable populations around the world. This collection on stigma research and global health emerged largely as a result of a 2017 meeting on the "The Science of Stigma Reduction" sponsored by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). An overwhelming consensus at the meeting was reached. It was determined that for stigma research to advance further, particularly to achieve effective and scalable stigma reduction interventions, the discipline of stigma research must evolve beyond disease-specific investigations and frameworks and move toward more unified theories of stigma that transcend individual conditions. This introduction reflects on the value of taking this cross-cutting approach from both a historical and current perspective, then briefly summarizes the span of articles. Collectively, the authors apply theory, frameworks, tools, interventions and evaluations to the breadth of stigma across conditions and vulnerabilities. They present a tactical argument for a more ethical, participatory, applied and transdisciplinary line of attack on health-related stigma, alongside promoting the dignity and voice of people living with stigmatized conditions. The collection homepage can be found at http://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/stigma .