It’s a truth universally acknowledged - though less often acted upon - that men can be reluctant to talk about their health. This silence can be deadly. That’s why it matters when high-profile figures, like Sir Chris Hoy, speak openly about their own diagnoses. His sharing of his story last year has prompted more men to ask about PSA (prostate-specific antigen) tests; a positive step. But we still have a long way to go.
You might think it’s too early to mention ‘Movember’, but with this week marking Men’s Health Week, I was invited to speak at the charity’s new exhibition in Parliament, which highlights “real issues facing real men”. For those unfamiliar, Movember is a global men’s health charity which has delivered over 1,300 projects worldwide, spanning mental health initiatives, medical research, and grassroots campaigns in sport and education.
Men’s health has been a central focus during my time in ministerial roles. At the Ministry of Justice, I saw firsthand the deep links between untreated mental illness, addiction, and criminal behaviour. Many of those in our prison system were clearly struggling with conditions like depression, PTSD, or schizophrenia before they came into contact with the law. It raises a powerful ‘what if’. What if they’d received support earlier?
Earlier, as Education Secretary, I’d introduced the new curriculum in health education as a mandatory part of the curriculum alongside relationships and sex education. This change was to ensure young people could have the tools to understand their physical and mental health, build emotional resilience, and know when, and how, to ask for help.
Campaigns like Movember and the farming sector’s Mind Your Head have been instrumental in starting to break the stigma around men’s mental health. But it’s not just these campaigns that matter. Local action can be just as powerful. The Boys Need Bins campaign, spearheaded by East Hampshire resident, Jonathon Hall, is a case in point. It highlights a simple but overlooked issue - the absence of sanitary bins in male toilets for men living with incontinence or using stomas, often as a result of prostate cancer treatment.
Thanks to the campaign, Hampshire County Council became one of the first in the country to install male sanitary bins across its buildings. The impact has spread. Bins are now available in Moto service stations and will soon be installed in every toilet at Heathrow Airport. Campaigners are now working with Prostate Cancer UK, and speaking to major football and rugby clubs, to push for a national approach.
Last year saw a significant milestone, with the Men’s Health Review, by the select committee led by former Winchester MP Steve Brine. While it highlighted some progress, such as improved cancer survival rates, it also revealed that male life expectancy dropped more sharply after Covid than that of women.
The government’s new Men’s Health Strategy, which complements the Women’s Health Strategy, is a welcome development. But it must go further, tackling the reasons why men delay seeking help. There is scope for more services outside working hours, in non-clinical settings, and directly confronting stigma around certain conditions.
We also need to refocus on prevention. Men are more likely to smoke, drink excessively, and suffer related harm. They’re also more likely to die by suicide, yet are underrepresented in mental health services. And while men are disproportionately affected by diabetes, they account for just 45% of referrals. These gaps cost lives.
We have to get men talking about their health and that conversation needs to start early. Changing a cultural norm doesn’t happen overnight, but the benefits could be, quite literally, life-saving.
