Health of Men

A Self-Important History

For most of its existence as a lottery funded project HOM was at the forefront of men's health work and was the largest men's health initiative in the UK .   Its primary aim was and is to get men to use health services more. Stats show that men do worse in virtually all health outcomes compared to the hardier sex. From infant mortality through all the major killer diseases   to life expectancy, men fall down flat, literally.

The HOM project set out to remedy this in Bradford, UK using a series of experimental interventions based on research and practice by people like Trefor Lloyd of ‘Working With Men' and others. Research showed that men responded better when health advice was made easier by taking it to where they were and making it accessible in other ways e.g. by making it more informal. An example of this was the pub quiz, the aim of it being to provide health related information in a socially acceptable format, to raise the profile of the health of men project, to introduce men's health related topics into the social setting of a pub and to encourage the association of health and fun.

In 2002 the HOM project had a grant offer accepted and was bankrolled by the Big Lottery Fund for 5 years to the tune of 1 million pounds (with a further million being effectively match-funded & staffed by a range of partners including the then four Bradford & Airedale PCTs and Bradford Metropolitan District Council)

The freedom to improvise interventions afforded by this Lottery funding allowed the team to develop many other different approaches to get men to talk about their health, showing that indeed they do care about it if given the opportunity.

World's First Men's Health Week - In Keighley

In the beginning, around October 99, the then team ran a men's health week – the first of its kind in the world - in the West Yorkshire town of Keighley , offering information, advice, exercise demonstrations and entertainment in an attempt to attract men to an event that focussed exclusively on their health. A questionnaire asked for their opinions on where they would most prefer to be offered health advice and of what type. Out of a total of 393 respondents 71% wanted more information - most particularly on heart disease, stress, diet and exercise.

There was a series of questions which ran: who is the healthiest man you know? How did he get that way? And why aren't all men as healthy? The answers were no surprise: the most frequent answer was Linford Christie, who at that time, 1998, was in the news for getting an OBE because of his sporting prowess. Clearly many of the   respondents felt that health equated with fitness. There were several other sportsmen mentioned, their qualification for the healthiest man being that they trained and kept themselves fit. The answer to the question ‘Why aren't all men as healthy?' was consistently stated as due to a lack of time and too much alcohol and smoking, clearly indicating that most men knew what it took to be more healthy, but felt that it was a hard thing to achieve.

The results of the questionnaire set the agenda and location of a range of men's health drop-ins in Keighley, some of which worked and some of which didn't. The process of developing health resources for men took on more firmly the pattern that came to characterise the project as a whole, that of ‘suck it and see': we were fortunate to have a highly motivated group of people with a wide variety of skills and lots of ideas. They reminded me in some ways of the A-Team: a group of eccentric individuals with divergent skills welded into an effective fighting unit – but without the cigars and jewellery. We had a fair degree of freedom in deciding what kind of interventions to use and this concoction led to a number of inventive strategies to try to engage men in their health. HOM worked outside of traditional health settings, i.e. pubs, barbershops, retail outlets, betting shops, sporting clubs and other various male oriented venues. Venues like these allowed the team to not only reach men they otherwise wouldn't, but also to maximise their leisure opportunities whilst still working.

National Awards and The HOM Book

We won the regional Health & Social Care Awards in spring 2004 – the Reducing Inequalities category - and went forward to the final in London in June. Although we didn't win the final we were   mentioned by Dr. Howard Stoate MP for   Dartford in the House of Commons as an example of good practice.

Further honour was brought to the project by Andrew Harrison who won the Queen's Nursing Institute award for his work on weight management with men from Bradford 's cleansing department in 2005. In the final year of the Lottery funding the team wrote a book of their experiences edited by David Conrad and Alan White of Leeds Carnegie University, called ‘Men's Health How to Do It', published in 2007 – the distilled essence of the collective wisdom of the project, a Library of Alexandria of men's health.

Where We Are Today

In 2008 our Lottery Funding ended and the project was mainstreamed within the newly formed Bradford & Airedale tPCT. As with any process of digestion there have been both pleasant and less pleasant results and of course large amounts of gas. The HOM team has shrunk in number but become more of a permanent fixture within the health services of Bradford .

The project has expanded into many areas of work from saunas to schools, clinics to domino clubs to barber's shops, using any and all methods to engage men in their health. Sport has proved popular as has providing food and going into workplaces; but also some initiatives have worked despite the prevailing wisdom, finding success in health centres and other traditional healthcare settings.

To try and summarise the above is difficult - however clearly what the project illustrates,

is that men do and will care about their health if they are approached in the right way and offered the right sort of deal.

- by Dennis Jones May 2009

Download HOM Report 2003 - (523kb)