Men use the internet. Jim Pollard, who is editor of the MHF England's popular men's health information website malehealth.co.uk as well as this website, welcomes a new online initiative from the EMHF.
At the EMHF, we’ve long known that the popular notion that men are not interested in their health is nonsense. When it comes to certain topics - their sexual health, for example – they’re very interested indeed.
As editor of the Men’s Health Forum’s website malehealth.co.uk, I also know that men like the idea of having their health questions answered online. We used to have a section called 'Ask The Doctor' which enabled men to ask doctors questions by email. It was very popular but, in the absence of a sponsor, we’re no longer able to provide it. Several years since the last question was answered, men still ask for it.
That’s why I’m delighted that the EMHF is now taking up this idea in its new web-based projects on sexual health (premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction) and on prostate problems.
Both projects will offer a web-based set of questions and answers (Q&As) assisted by an online 'Ask The Doctor' facility manned by EMHF-appointed and briefed health professionals.
An analysis of the prostate projects questions and answers will form the basis for a presentation to the World Congress of Men’s Health in October.
The questions and answers generated by the sexual health project will be used to develop an information booklet that addresses the main concerns. This means the content will be based on the real needs of men not the needs perceived by professionals. Again, I know as editor of malehealth.co.uk, that these are not always the same. If I had five Euros for every man who has told me he wasn’t warned about possible sexual function problems after prostate surgery, malehealth would never need to look for sponsorship again – and that’s just one example.
The booklet will follow EMHF’s award-winning mini-manual style which uses language and layout most effective to communicating health messages to men. (We hope the health professionals who answer the questions online will try to do the same!) Information about potential language and cultural differences will be collected through the online exercise to enable effective translations of the booklet and their dissemination through EMHF’s network.
Not duplicating existing work
It is, to coin a phrase, just what the doctor ordered. Clearly there is already some excellent work being done on these topics in Europe, particularly on the prostate side. These EMHF website will not be duplicating the work of existing high quality telephone helplines, for example, but complementing it.
Although the prostate site is currently only available in English, the sexual health site will, when it is online, offer 12 languages. Both sites will be advertised across a most European countries.
Malehealth has had over three million visitors in the last two years so no, the problem is not that we men don’t want to understand their health better, it’s more that the ways health providers expect them to do it, doesn’t really suit most of us. We’re expected to take time off work, sit for a long time in a public waiting room that appears more concerned with the needs of women and children than men and then find out everything we need in a short, frantic ten minute conversation in someone else’s office. Hardly ideal.
Independent, professional conversation
The internet, by contrast, is private, can be accessed anytime and permits reflection. Men like it. In a survey for this year’s Men’s Health Week on malehealth.co.uk, we asked visitors where they went first when looking for health information: 70% said they went to the internet.
On these EMHF sites, men will be able to have a genuine email conversation with a doctor. It won’t be one-off. And, in contrast to so many of the health ‘offers’ online, this will be totally independent – nobody is trying to sell anyone anything.
It’s not a substitute for seeing a doctor but it can make a later consultation far more useful for doctor and patient alike. Through your organisations and other networks, make sure as many European men as possible know about this fantastic new facility. Believe me, they will welcome it. And it won’t last forever.
By using the sites, they’ll not only get a personal, professional answer to their own question but help other men too.
- The EMHF’s prostate website Your Prostate is now live at www.yourprostate.eu. The sexual health site will be online shortly.
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