Gender data deficit in local health

31/03/15 . News

A new report by the Men’s Health Forum shows how JSNAs are failing men (and women)

Gender Data Deficit in Local Health report cover

The Men’s Health Forum analysed all 147 available Joint Strategic Needs Assessments (JSNAs), the key document local authorities rely on to understand the health of men and women in their area.

The report shows that just 18% of JSNAs adequately used data broken down by gender. Key health indicators such as lifestyle and disease prevalence and mortality are infrequently recorded by gender. To tackle this, we prepared the report comparing how different local authorities cover the health needs of men and women in their JSNAs – and providing helpful insight into how this can be improved.

Read The Gender Data Deficit in Local Health.

Key messages

The majority of local authorities are not addressing men’s health. Only 27 out of 147 (18%) had a majority of their measures in their JSNA local and gendered, that is broken down to show figures for men and for women in their area.
Worryingly, areas with poor male life expectancy are not necessarily prioritising men’s health, despite the numbers of men in their area who are dying young.
Local authorities are failing to recognise the importance of men’s mental health. Mental illness and mental health diagnosis rates were included by gender in just a handful of JSNAs yet 78% of people who take their own lives are male.
Key lifestyle areas are regularly being overlooked. Only alcohol is included as a gendered measure in the majority of the JSNAs. Too often diet, smoking and sexual health are neglected.
Figures on disease prevalence and related hospital admissions which affect men considerably more, such as cancer and coronary heart disease are not gendered leaving key gaps in the understanding of survival and the burden of disease.

The Men’s Health Forum has outlined areas of best practice where JSNAs have used local gendered data. The report also calls on local authorities to use the gendered data available and for more data to be collected nationally and locally by gender.

This project is part of the Men's Health Forum's work as a strategic partner of the Department of Health, NHS England and Public Health England.

More Info

The Gender Data Deficit
Listen to the audio - Interview with report author Ed Bevan
Men's Health Manifesto
Haringey Health Data Report

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.

Here’s our fund-raising page - please chip in if you can.

Support us

Support us