Professor Alan White, patron

Professor Alan White PhD RN, is patron of the Men's Health Forum. He was the Founder and Co-director of the Centre for Men’s Health at Leeds Beckett University.

He was also a co-founder of the Men’s Health Forum (England & Wales) Charity and the Chair of the Board of Trustees for 12 years. Alan is a Board member of the International Society for Men’s Health. Alan has a Visiting Professorship at the University of Malay in Malaysia and an Adjunct Professor role with the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia.

Alan has recently headed up an international team of academics to complete ‘The State of Men’s Health in Europe’ Report for the European Commission and was also on the team completing the European Commission study on the Role of Men in Gender Equality. His other research includes the ‘Scoping Study on Men’s Health’ for the Department of Health in England; the ‘Report on the State of Men’s Health across 17 European Countries’; and a report in conjunction with Cancer Research UK on the ‘Excess Cancer Burden in Men’. His research includes work on men’s experiences of illness including coronary heart disease, diabetes, prostate cancer and penile cancer. His other work includes the evaluation of Premier League Health Initiative; Tackling Men’s Health with the Leeds Rhino’s, and was a collaborator on the Football Fans in Training study with the Scottish Premier League.

Currently Alan is working on a detailed analysis of men’s health in Leeds for the City Council, a study on Gender and Coronary Artery Disease for the European Commission and an evaluation of the Bradford Reducing Anger and Violent Emotions (BRAVE) project. He is also part of the team undertaking a systematic review on the high incidence of premature death in Glasgow (The Glasgow Effect). Alan is also working with a number of academics and clinicians around the country on the issue of young men hospitalised with life changing conditions.

Alan has a number of PhD students and Post Doctoral students, who are exploring a wide range of interesting issues. These include: a study on men with psychosis in Nigeria; the experience of men on a single sex as opposed to mixed sex weight loss groups; how being in a gay partnership influences health management; and what influences a man to engage with screening programmes. The Post Doc study is exploring the experiences of men with rheumatoid arthritis.

There is a new book coming out soon “Conrad, D & White A ‘Sports-Based Health Interventions: Case Studies from Around the World’ Springer”. The Expert Symposium report on Men and Mental Health is due for publication shortly, this was a joint venture with Movember and the Men’s Health Forum. A publication is also nearing completion as part of the EUGenMed Network, which is a cross Europe funded network on the role of sex and gender in medicine. Later on in the year the ICUD publication on Men’s Health and Infertility should be also completed.

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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