Local councils join the campaign

28/08/24 . News

Local government leaders have echoed the Forum's call for a men's health strategy.

A new report from the Local Government Association (LGA) highlights the ‘silent health crisis’ facing men in England. Men’s health: The lives of men in our communities draws attention to 'severe' regional inequalities, to premature male death and to disproportionately higher rates of suicide, cancers, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

The LGA recognise that traditional services are often inadequately geared to men. They said councils were working with community and grassroots organisations to tackle the issue in recognition that ‘men often distrust traditional health services’.

Suicide prevention fund

It urged the Government to create a men’s health strategy and reinstate the £57m local suicide prevention fund, which ended in March 2024.

The chairman of the LGA’s community wellbeing board, David Fothergill, said:

Men in England are facing a silent health crisis, dying nearly four years earlier than women with high rates of cancers, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and suicides. Stark inequalities mean men in deprived areas live almost 10 years less than their more affluent peers.

We are calling for men’s health to be recognised as a national concern, and for the Government to implement a men's health strategy. Innovative local initiatives led by councils are making strides, but national action is needed to help close the life expectancy gap.

Northern Ireland too

The LGA cover England. Meanwhile, a new paper in the journal The Sociology of Health and Illness has examined men's health in Northern Ireland and concluded that it too needs a men's health strategy.

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.

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