A few years ago I had a conversation, at a local healthy living exhibition, about how to get the health message across to men. The person I was chatting with, apart from being a friend, was also a trained nurse and a health promotion professional.
She had come to the conclusion that holding events, such as the one we were at, was simply not working; men didn’t, by and large, attend and were showing no real interest in their health. The conclusion was that, almost evangelically, the message had to be taken out into the ‘market place’. The market place was broadly defined as football grounds and pubs. In other words, places that the target demographic were likely to be, in large numbers, on a regular basis.
Now, to put this in a geographic context, the demographic in question is situated in the North-West of England where, for a majority of men, football and beer are two of their most important life-aspects. Conversations around healthy eating, the benefits of vegetables, the danger of excessive cholesterol and a regime of regular exercise are fairly rare, and often viewed as deeply un-manly and possible even somewhat feminine.
Imagine my surprise when, having reached that certain dangerous age of such previously unmentionable subjects as furring arteries, expanding waistlines and heart-attacks, that upon enquiring of my GP whether I could have a Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) blood test I was refused.
Now, here was a presenting bloke actually interested in health prevention. I was questioned as to whether there was a reason for asking for the test; had I any symptoms that were worrying me? I hadn’t. Did I know the test was not conclusive? I did. So could I have the test? No.
Over the next 2 years I broached the subject two more times, and the answer was always the same. If you have no symptoms, you can’t have a PSA blood test. In other words, unless the medical profession thought there was a good chance that you might already have Prostate Cancer, you were not going to get a test.
So much for preventive medicine in the male population.
Compare this to health prevention in the female population. Breast screening is now an almost universally accepted option as are cervical smears and even, in young girls, cervical cancer inoculations (but that is a whole other issue). All these measures are now an integral part of female health prevention.
But for men?
So eventually it came to the point where, nearly 3 years after that first conversation with my Doctor, I was discussing another health issue with my GP Nurse, and the PSA subject came up again. I was asked the same questions and gave the same answers. I then asked the nurse whether that, If I was a woman, and I asked you for a cervical smear, would I get one? She thought for a few seconds, and admitted that, yes, I would. She immediately wrote me in for a PSA test. The results were negative, and all is fine.
However, the point of this is not my health. It is to do with the reluctance to offer equal preventative health options to men as to women. Simple as that. As far as I can tell, this inequality still broadly exists. It is not good enough to say that men are just not interested in their own health. It is the job of the health service to be far more pro-active in reaching out to the male population, especially where it is more difficult to connect to that population, with preventative care.
We cannot really talk about equality and diversity, etc., and ignore such an outrageous situation. Men’s health and Women’s health are equally important, other equality means nothing.
