No More Excuses!

At some point or other, you’ve probably complained about a man you know, “Why won’t he just go to the doctor already???” He’s got plenty of reasons. (“I can wait this out.”) But he may pay for his reluctance down the road in the form of poor health. No More Excuses

It’s not your imagination that men don’t visit the doctor as often as women. In 2019, a survey of 1,174 men in the U.S. conducted by the Cleveland Clinic showed that about two-thirds (65%) said they tend to wait as long as possible to see their doctor if they have any health symptoms or injury.¹ Over three-fifths said they prefer to try to self-diagnose before going to the doctor.

Delays in diagnosis and treatment can have serious – even deadly – consequences:

- Globally, average male life expectancy at birth was 71 years in 2019, and average healthy life expectancy stood at 63 years.² For women, life expectancy was 76 years, and healthy life expectancy was 65 years.

- Men are particularly vulnerable to cancer.³ The global age-standardized incidence for all cancers combined is 222.0 for men and 186.0 for women. The mortality rates are 120.8 for men and 84.2 for women. In England, the five-year net survival rate of prostate cancer is 100% when diagnosed at stage 1 or stage 2; this drops slightly to 96% at stage 3, and then sharply to 49% at stage 4.⁴ It’s clear that people who receive a diagnosis at an earlier stage of the disease have a better prognosis.

- Men are more likely than women to be hospitalized due to severe dental disease because of a delay in seeking help at a stage when their condition would be easier to treat.⁵
Globally, because of a lack of engagement with primary care services, 25% of men with HIV are unaware of their status, 45% of men with HIV are not receiving anti-retroviral treatment, and 53% do not have a suppressed viral load.⁶

- In the U.S., men die by suicide nearly four times more often than women, based on 2020 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.⁷

Delays in diagnosis and treatment can have serious – even deadly – consequences

What to Do?

Ultimately, men must take responsibility for their own health. But doctors, loved ones and others can nudge them in the right direction.

In the Cleveland Clinic survey, among men who skip annual check-ups, 61% said they would be more likely to see a doctor if doing so were more convenient, e.g., if visits could be conducted virtually or appointments scheduled in non-working-hours.⁸

Many men’s health initiatives have engaged with men in settings where they feel more comfortable than they do in the doctor’s office. A program in Scotland -- Football Fans in Training (FFIT) -- delivers a healthy living and weight loss program while tapping into men’s interest in soccer.⁹ FFIT is delivered by community coaches at 24 top professional soccer clubs to groups of men aged 35-65 who are obese or at high risk of becoming obese.

Barbershops are emerging as a site for effective community-based health promotion among men.¹⁰ In the United States, where they have a particular cultural significance for many African-American men, barbershops offer a safe space for cancer screening, blood pressure, and blood sugar checks as well as interventions on mental health, diet, and exercise. In the UK, the Lions Barber Collective trains barbers to talk to their male clients about mental health issues with the aim of reducing suicides.

Friends, family, and partners can help by being open to discussing health in a positive way, which can reduce the perceived stigma of men accessing healthcare.¹¹Longer term, health literacy must be improved. And more broadly, the societal culture of masculine bravado needs to be broken and with it, the perception among men that seeking medical help is something done only in an emergency.

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