Men’s Health Week – A Time to Focus on the Men In Our Lives

This week is Men’s Health Week and, at the risk of going against our push for inclusion, I’m going to eliminate approximately half of our population in this week’s blog and focus on men, and, specifically, older men.

There’s a good reason for this focus. Because of poor health habits, lack of health insurance, failure to seek medical attention, and dangerous occupations, men live sicker and die younger than women. Men die at higher rates for 9 of the top 10 causes of death. This includes deaths from cancer, diabetes, suicide, and accidents, and diseases of the heart, kidney, and liver. Men account for over 90% of workplace fatalities, are far less likely than women to have health insurance and are half as likely to see a doctor for preventive care. When men get sick it affects those around them, the loss of their income to the family often has serious consequences. I’ve talked with many older widowed women at seminars and health fairs about the impact on her life when her husband died. Often there is a loss of retirement income to say nothing about the loneliness that ensues. According to the Census Bureau there are 105 males born for every 100 females, but by age 34 there are more women than men. According to the United States Census Bureau (2000), the ratio of men to women in the early retirement years (age group 65-69) reduces to 85 men per 100 women. According to the Administration on Aging (2001), more than half of the elderly widows now living in poverty were not poor before the death of their husbands. Poor health and the early death of men impacts their families and loved ones. The good news is that the cause for this disparity is not unchangeable.

In my generation, and historically, men have been the primary bread winner, while women were focused on the family, which included the health of the family. This begins to explain some of the health disparity between men and women. I’ve worked with the Men’s Health Network for many years, participating on panels and working with them on common issues. They are a national non-profit organization whose mission is to reach men and their families with health awareness messages where they live, work, pray, and play. They’ve done many health fairs with professional sports teams, businesses, and religious organizations where they did screenings and offered health information for men. They found that the way to get men to attend these health fairs was to go through their wives. It was the wife who convinced her husband to attend the fair, do the screenings and get the helpful health information. Men, and I speak from experience here, are very good at ignoring their own bodies’ health signals, not scheduling or postponing checkups, and generally not taking care of themselves.

The pandemic continued to show this disparity. Over 65,000 more men than women have died from COVID-19. Now I’m a big fan of individual responsibility and taking care of your own health falls under that heading, but men are absolutely influenced by loved ones, family and friends who are important in supporting them to take action toward better health. Darrell Sabbs, a community health advocate in southwest Georgia, emphasized that, “Today we see men come in with more advanced diseases simply because they lost trust in, and access to, healthcare during the pandemic. What we are doing now is celebrating a return to normal where hopefully men and their families will take on a deeper concern for their health.” He also noted, “Trusted voices had to be found, and they were found in our communities and churches.”

I was intrigued by Mr. Sabbs saying that men lost trust in, and access to, healthcare during the pandemic. What we didn’t need was another reason for men to ignore their health but I’m afraid that some of the vaccine hesitancy during the pandemic was uncharacteristically fueled by men and a growing distrust in government agencies. I’m sure this, along with the other noted reasons, was the basis for disparity between men’s and women’s deaths in the pandemic.

 So, here comes the action portion of my blog. What can we do? One thing we can do is observe Wear BLUE Day. Wear BLUE Day is observed on the Friday of National Men’s Health Week, which is this Friday and just happens to be the Friday before Father’s Day. It is a great time to raise awareness and educate everyone about encouraging men to seek regular checkups, to get educated on testicular and prostate cancer along with other health issues that affect men (cardiovascular disease, skin cancer, lung cancer, diabetes, gout, and more.) Hopefully, wearing a blue ribbon will trigger conversations about men’s health.

There is something else you can do, if you have a friend, husband, or a family member who hasn’t taken the steps to keep himself healthy, find a voice that he trusts to discuss the steps to a healthier life. If that trusted voice is yours, fine, if it’s a close friend, a relative or a church leader, get them to have a serious talk with the man in question. Encourage the trusted voice to emphasize how important your man’s health is to those around him. To remind him about the joy he will have when he is able to actively participate in, and be present at, important events with his children, grandchildren, and even great grandchildren. A trusted voice can make a huge difference in a man’s life.

Men’s Health Week is an ideal time to focus on improving the health of those men in our lives who are so important to us.

Best, Thair