menshealthaustralia.net

 AMHF submission to the National Men's Health Policy

The AMHF has provided a submission to the National men's Health Policy (download it here). The AMHF is pleased that Australia will have a men's health policy but strongly exhorts the government to create some structure which will be able to draw together the needs of boys and men across Australia, reflecting their diversity and their varying life contexts, whether Aboriginal men struggling against marginalisation, boys in school, men in the home, recently arrived immigrant men, men in the workplace or in retirement. This is what we understand when the DoHA discussion document speaks of the "social determinants of men's health". The importance of such a coordinating mechanism cannot be overemphasised. The lack of any such structure or clear accountability for creating and monitoring successful outcomes in improving men's health, is the most important reason why so many good men's health initiatives have not been sustained in recent years.

A national men's health structure could, for example, take the form of a cross-government committee or a National Interagency made up of government and non-government stakeholders, or a specific office within DoHA.

In addition,

• The AMHF applauds the idea of "men-friendly" health services and the idea that better use of these services calls for designated health care worker training programs that would make our health care system more effective at engaging men.
• We strongly suggest that the Policy does not become just a series of expensive health promotion campaigns focused upon male behaviour change. For example, only encouraging men to change their diets in order to address cardiovascular disease, when all the evidence points to the fact that a major cause of this condition is stress. Behavioural change is of course important, but health promotion efforts to effect this change which do not address the contexts of men's lives can be ineffective or even counter-productive.
• AMHF applauds the intention to reduce the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous health status and looks to the policy to direct funds to be spent in providing Aboriginal male-friendly services.
• We also suggest that there be an increase in evidence based research on men's health issues (not just on male disease but also on the social determinants of their well being) and that the funding be provided for current effective community men's health promotion programs and services that have improved male health outcomes.