Campaign to encourage men to use pharmacies launched
The Forum has launched a £30,000 Department of Health-funded project designed to improve the use men make of high-street pharmacies.
The MHF's director of operations Stephen Sibbald says: 'we believe that pharmacy services have a potentially significant role to play in improving the still unnecessarily and unacceptably poor state of men's health.'
Over the course of the next year, the Men and Pharmacy project will be:
- identifying and evaluating what is currently known about men's use of pharmacy services, including how much they use them and what they use them for
- leading focus groups with men and with pharmacists to find out what both groups think what will and will not work
- working with pharmacy education and training providers on the development of curricula that include gender and men's health issues and
- developing a pilot for a practical project, based on the outcomes of this learning, to show how men can be encouraged to make better use of the high-street pharmacy.
The results of this project will be published in a report in the summer of 2008. The image is froma previous camapign to encourage men to visit pharmacies.