Men's health action needed says Marmot report

01/10/14 . News

New Marmot Indicators from the UCL Institute of Health Equity highlight the effect of deprivation on men's life expectancy.

The health of men in deprived areas is a regular feature of the Men's Health Forum's work.

Now, the new Marmot Indicators from Dr Michael Marmot's Institute of Health Equity highlight this issue and calls for more focus on men's health.

The new report on the indicators says:

The fact that inequalities in life expectancy at birth are greater for men can also be seen from the numbers of local authorities with more than a 10 year gap in life expectancy between the most and
least deprived areas within them. For males, there are 36 local authorities with a gap of 10 years or more for men, and 8 local authorities with a gap of 10 years or more for females. This gender
inequality can also be described by looking at the other end of the scale; at the number of areas with a life expectancy gap of less than 5 years. For males, there are 5 local authorities with a gap of 5 years
or less, and for females there are 50 local authorities where the gap is 5 years or less.

The Men's Health Forum has met with Dr Michael Marmot and welcomes his call for more of a focus on men's health. We look forward to meeting with him and his team again soon to make this happen.

Key data - men's life expectancy
Sick of being unemployed - tackling the health of unemployed men

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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