New health resources to improve men’s health

The University of Western Sydney has released four comprehensive new Resource Kits to provide best-practice guides for health and community services working with men and boys.

The four kits cover the most important aspects of health engagement and provide a new opportunity for services to engage more effectively with male clients.

The four Resource Kits are:

• Practitioners’ Guide to Accessible Health Care for Men
• Practitioners’ Guide to Effective Men’s Health Messaging
• Practitioners’ Guide to Men and Their Roles as Fathers
• Practitioners’ Guide to Men and Mental Health

Services and practitioners identified these four topics as the areas of most concern and in need of additional, trusted information. The Resource Kits provide in-depth reviews, best practices and essential background information to enable proactive health and community services to structure their services in a more accessible and male-friendly style.

Many services are adopting practices that actively consider the needs of men and boys as much as other population groups, often with significant success. By understanding how men and boys access health information and make health-related decisions within the contexts of their lives, health and community services can provide better outcomes for men and boys as well as improve their own business outcomes.

The guides also consider the essential factors that becoming and being a father play on men’s and boys’ health and the health of the whole family. These factors are only starting to be recognised by services as an important part of and an entry point into working with men and their health and wellbeing.

“These Resource Kits have been compiled by Australia’s foremost experts on each male health topic, with extensive review by the male health community and the NSW Ministry of Health,” says Professor John Macdonald, Director of the Men’s Health Information and Resource Centre at the University of Western Sydney.

“The authors bring extensive experience of the challenges and opportunities they have faced in designing and implementing programs to attract and engage men and boys across a variety of health initiatives.”

“This experience and insight will ensure the most important topics are covered in-depth, and at a level relevant to busy services.”

The resource kits are available here.

(Source: University of Western Sydney)