Friday, October 22, 2010

Depressing work but you can help

The MHF will launch a new campaign in early November. This will highlight the poor state of men's health across a whole range of measures. It will be the first time for quite a while we have done something like this - most of the Forum's work is project based so our reports and events focus on one disease area or type of service.

The work has been depressing frankly. Every sentence another bleak statement of men's lives too short.

On the positive side the MHF's done a lot of the work needed to show how to tackle the problems - our publications report on the policy and practice development work we have done.

Later in this new campaign we'll be looking at people's own stories. You can help with this, if you can't maybe someone you know can.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Choice and control and the 'Information revolution'

The Department of Health consultations are coming in thick and fast at the moment. A couple of weeks ago we submitted our response to the NHS White Paper- 'Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS'.

We called for the establishment of a Gender Equalities Board within the NHS Commissioning Board, to ensure that gender health inequalities are tackled throughout the NHS.
You can read our full response to the White Paper and our top ten 'asks' for men's health here.

Today the Department of Health has asked for feedback on the 'Choice and control' and 'Information revolution' proposals. You can find more information and download the consultation documents here.

We will be examining these consultations before the closing date of Jan 14th and we will report back here with our thoughts, so watch this space.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Men's health sent to Coventry

In actual fact the title of this post doesn't bear a lot of relevance to what I want to say, I just quite liked the sound of it! Thankfully, men's health hasn't been 'sent to Coventry' in the normal sense of the phrase. Rather, it has been picked up and championed, by Coventry City Council.

Last week MHF and Coventry City Council held a conference on men's health at Warwick University . The subtile of the event was 'A fresh start' and that is indeed what the day felt like.

130 delegates attended and heard from both local and national experts in the area (see here for full conference report) and it was encouraging to see such energy in the room. The last session of the day was an interactive discussion, with lots of attendees sharing examples of best practice.

One of the things for us as a national organisation to think about, is how to harness this energy and experience and how to keep an oversight of all the examples of good practice in working with men. This is especially relevant now, given the forthcoming changes to the structures of the NHS.

One of the ideas we are working on, is the development of a national database to capture examples of good practice, but there must be other ways too.

Any musings or suggestions on this are gratefully accepted. Just leave a comment below.