Our Challenges to Public Health England

We call on Public Health England to:
  • Ensure programmes to tackle obesity, reduce smoking and reduce harmful drinking are targeted to deliver for men and tailored to reflect what works with men
    Ensure the 41% higher incidence of TB amongst men is tackled in their planned tuberculosis strategy
  • More explicit public mental health strategy, including measures needed to improve men’s well-being and reduce male suicide
  • Target at least 50% male uptake in NHS Health Checks
    Drive good practice to meet men’s needs and lifestyle – with outreach to the highest risk groups
  • Drive symptom awareness and knowledge of the health system – especially how to seek help – starting with boys in school
  • Complete the work to make all published data and performance indicators ‘local, gendered and useful’.

> Next section: Our challenges to local health systems

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.

Registered with the Fundraising Regulator