It's Men's Health Week in June. What will you be doing in your country? Here Peter Baker of the Men's Health Forum England explains the thinking behind the MHF's campaign.
This year’s National Men’s Health Week - 14-20 June - will be the first-ever national campaign in the UK to encourage men and boys to become more physically active. We have a very specific target: we want to get a million more men moving.
Where did we get this figure from? The Chief Medical Officer for England recommends that adults do 30 minutes or more moderate or vigorous physical activity on at least five days a week. Currently 49% of men in this country in the 25-34 age group say they meet this target. We want to get the level of participation among men aged 35-64 up to the same level by 2012. This translates to getting just over 1.1m men more active in two years. How many men are active in your country? (See the new Eurobarometer survey showing one in three Europeans never exercise.)
Rather than focus, as health campaigners often have in the past, on the abstract possibility of the future prevention of disease, we aim to do this by pointing out to men the benefits right now of being more active: from relieving stress and anxiety to losing weight and even improving male sexual performance.
Three objectives
The Week has three main objectives:
- To encourage more men to become more physically active (eg. walking, using the stairs, gardening, dancing, recreational cycling, DIY)
- To improve male participation in sport
- To develop the potential of sports settings (eg. stadia, leisure centres) for delivering health services and campaigns to men.
MHF acknowledges that women and girls are more likely to be inactive and that action must be taken to tackle this. But we believe that complementary action also needs to be taken to address the low levels of activity in many groups of men.
As in all our National Men's Health Week work, this will not be a negative event focusing just on the problems that exist but will instead seek to promote a positive view of how the problems can be tackled by highlighting – and encouraging – better self-care by men and good practice within the health system and the world of sport.
As in previous years, National Men's Health Week 2010 will mark the start of a sustained work programme on improving men’s physical activity levels.
Seven Outcomes
The setting of specific objectives rather than a general 'awareness-raising' helps us to measure the effectiveness of what we're doing. MHF aims to achieve the following through Men’s Health Week 2010 and subsequent work:
- The production and dissemination of new health promotion resources on men and physical activity that can be used by a wide range of health professionals to support their work with men on this issue.
- An enhanced understanding among health and related professionals of the barriers to physical activity participation levels in men – especially men aged over 35 and in routine/manual groups – and the opportunities that exist to tackle this through a gender-aware approach.
- More sports organisations engaging men in a wide variety of ways, including through greater involvement in physical activity and by utilising the power of sport to reach men in local communities and/or as spectators/supporters.
- The identification and highlighting of gaps in policy, practice and research that will form the basis for a continuing MHF work programme.
- An improvement in men’s awareness of the importance of physical activity and the many options available.
- The development of new initiatives to increase men’s participation in physical activity.
- An increase in men’s awareness of, and use of, a variety of National Health Service and other support services, including health trainers and health (vascular) checks.
More on the MHF website.
The EMHF look forward to hearing from you about what's happening for Men's Health Week in your country.
