Who Self-Cares Wins

There is a commonly-held idea that men are invariably self-destructive when it comes to their health.  But this is not true.  Globally, most men do enough physical activity to benefit their health and do not smoke or drink alcohol.  Yet men’s health is still unnecessarily poor.  ‘Who Self-Cares Wins’ shows that male gender norms are a key barrier to better self-care for men; with the men who most closely identify with traditional masculinity being most likely to exhibit damaging lifestyle behaviours.  However, at the same time, health policies and services have rarely addressed men’s health needs.  This report argues that while it is clearly the responsibility of individual men to take care of their own health, strategies to improve men’s health cannot simply be based on changing lifestyle practices that are rooted in gender norms and other social determinants of health.  Who Self-Cares Wins proposes that action on a multi-layered and systems-wide basis is needed to improve men’s self-care effectively.  Read the report at: http://gamh.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Who-Self-Cares-Wins.GAMH_.April-2019.Final-report.pdf