How 'male health' fits into the field of urology

Abstract

The shorter life span and poorer health of men compared with women is concerning, affecting spouses, families, and communities. Physicians and policy makers have identified a growing need for a gender-specific focus on the unique health needs of boys and men and accompanying services. Men's health has emerged as a new discipline that is responsible for a gender-specific approach to health-services delivery, government policy, research, and advocacy. The urologic community has taken a leadership role in this specialty by defining the issues that face men in the 21(st) century, bringing together disparate areas of clinical care and research, and collaborating with stakeholders (such as primary care physicians and specialists from other disciplines) to create and implement men's health initiatives.

The men's health center: Disparities in gender specific health services among the top 50 “best hospitals” in America

“…In recent times, providers have begun to recognize an increased public appetite for such dedicated services [19] , and this growing demand may be contributory to the contemporary trend of emergent MHCs. Physicians have also begun to acknowledge the benefits of multidisciplinary models of care, as the American Urological Association's Committee on Male Health has stressed the need for urologists to learn to practice collaborative care with other specialists in order to fully meet the health care needs of their patients [3] . The implementation of such cross-specialty ventures can be ably optimized by MHCs.…”

“…These discrepancies are likely reflective of a combination of both male lifestyle choices, increased risky behavior, and susceptibility to disease [2] . Men, being typically more averse to seeking medical care than women, are known to underutilize health care resources, with up to 80% of men declining to see a physician without prompting by a spouse or partner [3] , [4] . In a national comparison of ambulatory care usage between men and women in the US, the rate of primary care visits made by women was 58% higher than that of men, and the rate of visits to outpatient subspecialty departments made by women was 40% higher than that of men, even after excluding women with solely pregnancy-related diagnoses [5] .…”

Composite health behaviour classifier as the basis for targeted interventions and global comparisons in men’s health

“…Men die prematurely from preventable causes at an unprecedented rate, best reflected by a large potential years of life lost (PYLL) of 3,836 per 100,000. 1,2 The etiology of increased mortality among men is unclear, though the evidence suggests that biological, environmental, psychological and behavioural factors are at play.…”

On the meaning of masculinities and its implication to advancing men’s health.

“…The field of men’s health has documented repeatedly the problem of sex-specific diseases and the health outcomes associated with behaviors associated with men, notably risk-taking and inadequate engagement with the health care system. From a social constructionist perspective, men, in contrast to women, are presumably enculturated in ways that increase their risks of injury, infection, and premature death (Broom & Tovey, 2009; Courtenay, 2000b; Elterman, Kaplan, Pelman, & Goldenberg, 2013). Within biology and medicine, it is more of an open question the extent to which biological factors, genes and hormones, contribute to sex differences between men and women in morbidity and longevity (Austad & Fischer, 2016; Lawton, 2011; Oliffe & Greaves, 2011; Rieker, Bird, & Lang, 2010).…”