Targeting cash saves men's lives

29/05/14 . Blog

A BMJ article shows that spending more health money in poorer areas saves men's lives.

The Men's Health Forum has often highlighted the effect of deprivation on men's health, or how the social gradient in health is greater for men. This is particularly clear in cancer, heart disease and suicide and we need real action to tackle it.

Now an article in the BMJ concludes:

The policy of allocating greater NHS resources to more deprived areas led to a reduction in absolute health inequalities in mortality amenable to healthcare. Investment of NHS resources in more deprived areas was associated with a greater improvement in outcomes than investment in more affluent areas.

It found that:

In the most deprived 20% of local authorities, each additional £10m of NHS resources was associated with a reduction in four male deaths per 100 000 (95% confidence interval 3.1 to 4.9) and 1.8 female deaths per 100 000 (1.1 to 2.4) from causes amenable to healthcare. In contrast, the association between the absolute increase in NHS resources and absolute improvements in male and female mortality amenable to healthcare in the more affluent parts of the country was not significant.

BMJ 2014;348:g3231

Key stats from the Men's Health Forum

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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