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INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS BRADLEY –
December 2006

Men’s Health Advisor,
Health of Men

Chris you’ve been a long-standing member of Health of Men – how far back does your involvement go and what sort of work did you do in the early days.

Up to 1998 I was a Community Nurse working around Haworth and Oakworth. In its infancy HOM was 3 or 4 people who met to discuss Men’s health and raise its profile. From what was essentially a discussion forum we received requests  for us to speak to wider groups and ‘spread the word’. Also when we came to look at front-line services we identified that men were not successfully  accessing these.  At that time I was given two hrs a week by my forward thinking manager to devote to Men’s Health and my involvement grew. For instance I braved the internet to design  the original HOM website, mostly in my own time, and registered it as www.healthofmen.com.

I know you also spend a proportion of your week focussing on continence problems, can you tell me about that.

The former Airedale PCT developed a service for both patients and professionals to access services around this condition. I was seconded to them for 2-3 days a week. I would seem  continence problems predominantly affect women but statistics also suggest 15% of men over the age of 40 are affected – I came in to the team because a) it is an underdeveloped condition and b) there’s a need to talk to a male of staff about what can be an embarrassing life effecting condition.

I am also aware you also specialise in erectile dysfunction (or impotence). Is there a connection between erection dysfunction and incontinence.

Yes, some medical conditions can effect both conditions – for instance Prostate problems.  Impotence can effect men more as they get olderand  it can also effect all ages of men. Experience suggests well over 50% of the men I see experience some difficulty with erections.

How receptive are men to the message you put out about the need to get help for erectile dysfunction?

So far we haven’t  actually highlighted as much as I would like – the full service is not available as it has to go through committees!.... However if you ask men, they will talk about it to you, but there is a way to go about this, you must prompt them. Because of this I have given talks to groups of  district nurses encouraging them to specifically bring up a question that mentions erectile dysfunction, because men wont report unless asked. But its an important problem to address as it can cause untold misery, putting great strain on relationships.

To sum up – Where do you see your work with health of men progressing to in the future?

At present my week is pretty full; two days for Public Health, one day studying for a BSC in Health-Care Studies and two days setting up and running men’s continence clinics. Because of changes to NHS structure that have grown out of ‘Our Health Our Care’, work in Airedale is currently becoming part of a District-wide Continence service.  I’m hoping to provide dedicated men’s health input for this.

Chris was interviewed by C. Andrew | back