'Still a lot to do'

Have twenty years of men's health work made any difference?

Peter Baker: 'we need a holistic approach'

The last decade has seen some inequalities in men's health widen.

Twenty years ago, Steve Robertson, now Professor of Men's Health at Leeds Beckett University, mapped what was being done in men's health promotion. Ten years later he repeated the exercise with a colleague and now a new paper Men and health promotion in the United Kingdom: 20 years further forward? has been published. This time, men's health consultant Peter Baker is the co-author.

In the attached audio clip, Peter tells website editor Jim Pollard that while there has been an increase in activity and improvements in outcomes there is still much to be done. Inequalities may be on the national health agenda but they have yet to filter down to local level and the gap between the least and the most deprived groups of men in terms of outcomes is widening.

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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