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HEALTH WARNING
We are no longer updating our Covid-19 hub regularly. That includes this page. Click here for the latest.
No 'one size fits all' approach to Covid vaccine
03/11/20 .
News
The Forum has called on government and the NHS to consider how best to reach different groups with any future vaccine.
Of course, not all men are the same. Nor are all women. But there are general differences that suggest that we need gender-sensitive targeting to maximise the take-up of the vaccine.
As previously reported on this website, men as a whole are more likely to be sceptical of the seriousness of Covid-19 and are less likely to take preventative action - be that mask wearing, social distancing or compliance with other rules.
When it comes to vaccines, government figures show that while working age men are less likely to get a flu vaccination than women, men are actually less likely to be sceptical about the benefits of vaccines than women. Anti-vaccination campaigns are often led by women.
There's also a need for age sensitivity. According to polling, the under 34s are twice as likely not to get vaccinated as the over 55s. Supporting this, the Forum has heard anecdotally that as the vaccine rolls out, younger groups may see less need to be vaccinated once older and higher risk groups have been.
The Forum is calling for:
- Intersectional analysis to develop a deeper understanding of the different barriers to vaccination between men and women - broken down by gender, age, ethnicity, deprivation and so on - and the public health messages and interventions needed to overcome them
- Targeted outreach to workplaces and areas visited by men (such as football grounds)
- Targeted communication to overcome the different barriers amongst different groups - amongst men, this could include use of role models (celebrities or men in positively-perceived roles such as emergency service workers) and the highlighting of the much higher risk of Covid-19 to men.
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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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