When­ev­er I think of men’s health, I re­flect on my dad’s at­ti­tude to­wards his health. Grow­ing up in rur­al Moru­ga in an agrar­i­an com­mu­ni­ty with my par­ents work­ing as small farm­ers to sus­tain us, health and med­ical in­ter­ven­tions were not high pri­or­i­ties. If we had an emer­gency, we would take care of it. We were vac­ci­nat­ed and got sea­son­al shots as rec­om­mend­ed, but be­yond that, I do not re­mem­ber much is­sue be­ing tak­en with health.

Dad­dy seemed to have very lit­tle in­ter­est in vis­it­ing a doc­tor. He was gen­er­al­ly in good health, in my es­ti­ma­tion, but with­in our home, we knew he had an on­go­ing con­di­tion that no one spoke about. On many oc­ca­sions, I want­ed to ask my moth­er about the is­sue, but that was a wall that seemed im­pen­e­tra­ble, a dis­cus­sion un­wel­come in our house­hold.

My dad was vo­cal about doc­tors’ vis­its and hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion, too. There is no mem­o­ry of him vis­it­ing a doc­tor for any rea­son, and he would al­ways say if he were ever hos­pi­talised, he would re­turn home in a cof­fin. And so he did.

No­vem­ber 1990, hav­ing been alive for two World Wars, one at­tempt­ed coup d’état, and many oth­er world events, my dad spent two nights at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and re­turned home, as he pre­dict­ed, for his fu­ner­al ser­vice.

I al­ways re­flect on how very lit­tle in­volve­ment we had with him and his health is­sues, even as he worked with my moth­er to pro­vide for our fam­i­ly. When I went to the gar­den with them, I al­ways ob­served my moth­er as the one who seemed more re­silient work­ing in the sun but nev­er thought of the fact that dad­dy’s health may have af­fect­ed our liv­ing cir­cum­stances.

I was clothed, shel­tered, and fed and re­al­ly did not have much to com­pare my life to un­til I got to sec­ondary school in the 1970s and saw stan­dards of liv­ing above that of a small farm­ing vil­lage. Even so, it took a while be­fore I con­sid­ered that many of those fam­i­lies were do­ing bet­ter be­cause the fa­ther was gain­ful­ly em­ployed.

As I be­gan ad­vo­cat­ing for men’s health some years ago, the fi­nan­cial im­pact was not up­per­most in my mind. I had not at first con­sid­ered a man’s em­ploy­ment, em­ploy­a­bil­i­ty, or lack of earn­ing as the main im­pact on a fam­i­ly’s well-be­ing and the fore­most rea­son why men’s health is deemed fam­i­ly health in lit­er­a­ture.

I prob­a­bly do not have this ref­er­ence too, hav­ing lived as a sin­gle woman rais­ing a child singly and not hav­ing the ref­er­ence of a man’s earn­ings im­pact­ing my liv­ing sit­u­a­tion.

When I think of men’s health, I most­ly be­gin at the place where men, in a so­ci­etal ex­pec­ta­tion of be­ing strong and not show­ing emo­tion and a so­cial­i­sa­tion that says they can­not ap­pear weak, are af­ford­ed less op­por­tu­ni­ty and space to care open­ly for their emo­tion­al needs.

I get that a man’s well-be­ing can de­ter­mine a fam­i­ly’s sta­bil­i­ty. That as providers, their over­all phys­i­cal health im­pacts on the fi­nan­cial, emo­tion­al, so­cial and spir­i­tu­al con­di­tions of their part­ners and their chil­dren, and their sta­bil­i­ty and se­cu­ri­ty. But most­ly when I think of the fam­i­ly sit­u­a­tion, I think of the neg­a­tive ef­fects fam­i­lies ex­pe­ri­ence be­cause the men­tal and emo­tion­al well-be­ing of men is ig­nored.

Of­ten too, that so­cial­i­sa­tion which acts against men ad­dress­ing their phys­i­cal and men­tal health is­sues cre­ates sig­nif­i­cant stress for them, which in turn im­pacts re­la­tion­ships and al­so pro­motes oth­er ad­verse sit­u­a­tions in homes.

As I read of menopause and per­i­menopause is­sues be­com­ing part of T&T’s main­stream health land­scape and the need to have women feel “sup­port­ed, in­formed, and em­pow­ered”, I won­dered about the preva­lence of the un­met needs of men’s re­pro­duc­tive health and hor­mon­al is­sues and oth­er pre­ven­tive health­care in­ter­ven­tions.

As a pub­lic health prac­ti­tion­er, I am al­ways think­ing and ob­serv­ing how women’s health is­sues gar­ner so much more in­vest­ment and em­pha­sis. It is sim­i­lar to how med­ical sci­ence has skewed our in­ter­est in our phys­i­cal health to the detri­ment of our men­tal health, and how the lat­ter is for­ev­er play­ing catch-up.

This is No­vem­ber, or in the world of men’s health, “Movem­ber”, in­spired by the 2003 cam­paign in Aus­tralia that brought back the mous­tache (“Mo”), us­ing the fad to raise funds for men’s health. Now, this cam­paign has evolved in­to a glob­al event. As well, No­vem­ber al­so marks In­ter­na­tion­al Men’s Day (No­vem­ber 19), a glob­al cel­e­bra­tion high­light­ing the is­sues of boys and men.

Movem­ber was in­spired by a friend’s moth­er, who was fundrais­ing for breast can­cer, which in turn prompt­ed a few men to cam­paign for men’s health, specif­i­cal­ly prostate can­cer and de­pres­sion.

To­day, the cam­paign has been ex­pand­ed to sup­port men’s health in four key ar­eas: prostate can­cer, tes­tic­u­lar can­cer, men­tal health, and phys­i­cal in­ac­tiv­i­ty. No­vem­ber opens a space for us to both cel­e­brate men and high­light is­sues that im­pact their well-be­ing.

I con­sid­er it fam­i­ly health, giv­en the role women must play in en­cour­ag­ing men to seek care, sup­port­ing them with­out judge­ment, and break­ing the cy­cle that does not “per­mit” a man to be suf­fi­cient­ly vul­ner­a­ble to seek help.