What men do online

Regular readers of the MHF's website will know that we were shortlisted as charity of the year in the Medical Journalists' Association's awards.

MHF with other charities and Dr Pixie McKenna, from the

TV programme Embarassing Bodies, at the MJA Awards

Sadly we did not win; the honour went to Sense About Science. I was able to have a good chat with them about our plans for National Men's Health Week 2011. This will focus on using technology to improve men's health and will include issues like understanding what's reliable information online.

We are still thrashing this out, to be honest, and had a meeting about it this week. The Forum's award winning health info website, malehealth, is incredibly popular and the government's plans for health state they want to make more use of technology. However, there are unanswered questions about what the government really means by this and also about how you can really encourage better use of health on the internet without increasing the numbers of people panicked by an internet diagnosis?

None of that however in the exciting new online health service for men launching next week. It's backed by the MHF along with others including Diabetes UK, Relate and the National Obesity Forum. Find out more on the Forum's own site on Monday!

White paper a blank page?

So 24 hours after their publication what do we know about the government's plans for NHS? Surprisingly little that we didn't know before.

There was little more detail about GPs holding the purse strings in Equity and excellence: liberating the NHS than in The Coalition: our programme for government. There was however, a fair bit more about public health.

In many ways this is understandable, in scrapping primary care trusts you need to design something else, in this case a Public Health Service and more work for local authorities. Then there's a bit missing - a plan for public health is not due until the autumn, although Andrew Lansley has set out his vision.

The Forum has been a little concerned by plans to give GPs more public health responsibilities. As we've found, men's use of traditional primary care is poor and services need to reach those who tend to avoid seeking help until it is too late.

We are optimistic about the duties of the National Commissioning Board. But will it really deliver on tackling inequalities in access and outcomes? Where GPs need to act on these issues will they really have the scale to do so, even when they are formed into consortia?

On men's health there is a lot they can do but will they have the time and money to first look at what works or will they spend the budget the treasury has entrusted to them failing to re-invent the wheel before disappearing back to the safety of their practices?

Charity websites: one screen, many audiences

Kaye Wiggins makes some good points about charity websites in her Third Sector blog. Apparently 60% of visits to charity websites result in users failing to find what they're looking for.

We're trying to deal with that on the MHF site with our 'my role' buttons on the top right of the home page. Clearly we should be developing the idea.

Kaye says: 'The problem for many charities is that they are unsure whether their websites are for their donors, their beneficiaries or both.' Or, should something be bigged up the home page just to keep one visitor - albeit a funder - happy?

Kaye could have added a related problem which is that charities are unsure whether their sites should reflect the world as they want it to be or the world as it is. When it comes to Men's Health Week for example we like to tell visitors about our great policies and research. But, apparently, they're mainly looking for free posters.

Are we trying to tell everyone how valuable and important the MHF is - and it is - or just help others do their jobs? Is it method of service delivery in itself or simply a shop window? And, the question that all website editors ask: is the resource devoted to a charity's website proportionate to its true importance?

What do you think of the MHF website?

Coalition government's vision for Public Health

The government’s plans for Public Health are taking shape. We have known since the publication of the Conservative’s Green Paper on Health ( 'A Healthier Nation') in January of this year, that if elected, the Conservatives planned to replace the Department of Health with the Department of Public Health.

Further details of the coalition government's Public Health plans are now beginning to emerge. The Health Secretary spoke last week at the Faculty of Public Health’s annual conference, about his vision for Public Health.

Andrew Lansley spoke about putting in place a new ‘framework which empowers people to make the changes that will really make a difference to the nation’s lives.’

Amongst other measures, he spoke about making more use of the voluntary sector locally. This obviously has the potential to impact positively on the sector, but how this might work is not yet clear.

Mr. Lansley has also stated that he wants to establish a new responsibility deal between Government and business ‘built on shared social responsibility and not state regulation’. This measure must be approached with caution. We know that state regulation can play an important part in improving Public Health. The smoking ban is a good example of this.

Click here to read our full news story

New report draws on MHF's work on health at work

2020health has just published their report on health and work, Health, disease and unemployment. It refers to the work the Forum did around National Men's Health Week 2008 when we focused on men and work.

In Improving male health by taking action in the workplace we called for business and the NHS to work together to deliver male friendly health services in the workplace. We also returned to a theme in our 2006 work on men's mental well-being - the effects both positive and negative - that work can have. So I am pleased to see that their top recommendation is that:

It would therefore seem sensible for the first aim of any policy change to make it in the interests of the individual, the employer, and society at large to align the incentives and close the loop between health, illness, and unemployment.

I went to one of the workshops that 2020health held whilst working on their report. It was a good event with a range of professions and organisations represented so it is good to see issues raised at that event reflected in the paper - and not only those I raised!

You can download Health, disease and unemployment or read more on 2020health's blog.