Foreword
Attention to men's health
David de Kretser
Professor, Governor of Victoria, Melbourne VIC
PP: 401 - 401
Article Text
The past 10 years has seen an increasing interest in male health. The term 'male' is used to emphasise that events in utero through to the ageing process influence health outcomes. Indeed, the recent Australian Government's policy is termed a 'male' health policy. It is critical that both biological and social determinants are recognised as having major influences on health issues for both males and females. When we investigate rates of cardiovascular disease, traffic accidents, alcohol and illicit drug use, or obesity, for example, using gender as a lens, then we begin to see men's experiences of these health problems as quite different from women's. If we then look at male-specific health problems such as prostate cancer, a men's health perspective can help us think more broadly about issues of masculinity, sexuality and men's relationships, not just the clinical response to consequences of the disease and its treatments.
This special issue of Health Sociology Review focuses on men's health, but adds new concerns to the existing list of health and well-being issues commonly included in men's health, some less familiar even to those working in the field. Such an addition to the men's health agenda is timely, as the Australian Government released its first National Male Health Policy: Building on the Strengths of Australian Males in 2010, followed soon thereafter by the Victorian State Government's Men's Health and Well-being Strategy, 2010-2014. Both documents improve the policy framework for focusing on men's health and create opportunities for more research, for policy and programme development and evaluation, and for medical and allied health professions training programmes to incorporate a men's health perspective.
I congratulate the joint editors of this special issue of Health Sociology Review for their hard work in putting this special issue together, and I especially congratulate the various authors of the nine papers included here, coming from Australia, Canada, the United States and Ireland, for their outstanding contributions. As someone whose professional life has focused on men's health, I look forward to the keen debate and discussion I am sure this special issue will engender.
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