Men's health: one of the largest but least-recognised health inequalities

Happy new year everyone from the MHF. CEO Peter Baker looks back on 2010 and ahead to 2011.

The year 2010 was a good one for the the Men's Health Forum.

National Men's Health Week in June brought together over 30 organisations to stress the importance of men becoming more physically active. During the Week, we set out our challenge to get one million more middle-aged men more physically active by 2012. In November, we launched our Lives Too Short campaign to highlight some key men's health issues, not least the very large number of men who still die prematurely (42% still die before the age of 75, 22% before 65).

We continued our important work as a Strategic Partner of the Department of Health. This included our first regional conference for the voluntary sector, organised in partnership with COVER for the east of England. A new report, Untold Problems, drew attention to the neglected area of men's mental health. We also developed a new training programme for the NHS, helped to re-launch the All Party Parliamentary Group on Men's Health, re-designed our two websites with added functionality, and published several new MHF/Haynes' Mini Manuals.

New challenges

2011 will bring new challenges as we continue to respond to the major changes to policy and NHS organisation planned by the government. We need to ensure that the health of men and boys is not overlooked, and hopefully more effectively addressed, as a result of these reforms. We also face a much tougher financial climate, not least because the majority of our income has until now come from government and the public sector. We are currently implementing a new approach to income generation which should enable us to appeal to a wider range of potential funders.

The Men's Health Forum already has an ambitious work programme in place for the coming year. We are about to publish another major report on men's mental health, Delivering Male, which will focus on the development of effective practice. In the Spring, we will make important new recommendations for improving the uptake by men of the National Bowel Cancer Screening Programme and this will be followed, in the early autumn, by an exciting new cancer awareness-raising campaign aimed specifically at men. In June, National Men's Health Week will focus on the potential for using new technologies to improve men's health. During the year, we will also be publishing a new range of health information products for 'the man in the street' which will complement our hugely successful Mini Manual series.

None of this work would be possible without the support and collaboration of a wide range of other people and organisations in the public, private and voluntary sectors who share our commitment to improving men's health. We look forward to continuing to work with all of them to continue to tackle one of the largest but still under-recognised health inequalities.

Happy new year.