It ain't strong to be silent

Blood pressure project targeting black African and Caribbean men.

In a project led by the Race Equality Foundation, the Men’s Health Forum teamed up with Faith Action and Clinks to develop a community-centred programme to offer blood pressure testing and raise awareness amongst black African and Caribbean males.

The programme was piloted in barbershops, a bus depot and a local church in three London boroughs.

It demonstrated that offering blood pressure checks in community settings could help overcome the reluctance amongst black African and Caribbean men to have their blood pressure checked.

The report, following evaluation between February-March 2020 in the London boroughs of Southwark, Hackney and Brent, concluded: 'The community blood pressure programme was welcomed in all community settings. The pilots engaged a considerable number of men in an accessible environment that they were comfortable in. There was a willingness from community stakeholders for the programme to be implemented over a longer period of time, and healthcare providers may wish to consider the practicalities of delivering blood pressure testing in similar settings for specific target groups.'

The Forum's role was to produce leaflets, posters and banners in support of the project that would appeal to the target audience. The leaflet appears below.

If you would like to work with the Men's Health Forum on a communications project targeting men, get in touch.

The Men’s Health Forum need your support

It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking.

In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to.

It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for.

We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing.

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