Journal of Mens Health最新文献

Men's lives and health are rooted in opportunity structures that are shaped by race, ethnicity and other characteristics that have important social, political, economic and cultural meaning. Within men's health, there is a need to consider how structural factors and men's socially-defined characteristics affect the relationship between sex, gender and health. The goal of an intersectional approach is to simultaneously examine the social and health effects of several key aspects of identity and context in ways that create a new understanding of these factors and that are a more accurate reflection of the lived experiences of the populations of interest. Despite their promise, intersectional approaches have been criticized for being difficult to operationalize and study systematically. This paper, however, presents a framework for studying the intersection of gender and other identities and characteristics that are relevant for men's health, and explicitly identifies key pathways and stratification variables to guide future research.

This framework highlights pathways and ways to think about why race, gender, age and ethnicity affect men's health, and offers a tool for studying the relationship between socially-defined characteristics and men's health. Future research on men's health should begin by recognizing that comparing how men experience and embody masculinities may be most useful when researchers are explicit about their assumptions and theories about what and how socially-defined characteristics intersect with gender in a given national and local context. Research employing an intersectional approach also may elucidate how men of specific population groups create new normative masculinities for themselves.

Background

Testicular cancer (TC) is the most common malignancy among men aged 15–35 years and although Africa has one of the lowest prevalence rates, TC is often diagnosed late. The aim of this study was to describe TC knowledge, perceived risk and barriers to testicular self-examination (TSE) among young males in Uganda.

Method

Self-administered questionnaires and a systematic random sampling technique were used to collect data from 323 male students in a Ugandan University.

Results

The participants were mostly in the 18–22 years age range (59%) (mean age = 22 ± 2.5 years). The majority of participants (87%) did not know what age group was most at risk for TC, when to perform TSE (71%) or whether testicular lumps are a sign of TC (77%). Participants mostly perceived their risk for TC as being either low (32%) or moderate (58%). The mean perceived risk for TC was 1.8 ± 0.61 and few participants (14%) were performing TSE regularly. Most participants (80%) reported a lack of skill for performing TSE as well as perceiving TSE as embarrassing (87%) and time consuming (79%). Self-reported practice of TSE was found to be associated with different aspects of TC knowledge (P = 0.01).

Conclusion

Young male Ugandans have little knowledge about TC and perceive their risk for this disease to be low. Findings show that having good knowledge about TC is associated with performing TSE. Implications for practice are that health care providers should scale-up health education about TC to empower young males with the knowledge and skills required for cancer preventive practices and behaviors.

Background

The objectives of this study were to determine if men realize the importance of optimizing their health prior to a pregnancy, whether the pregnancy is planned or not; and to evaluate their knowledge level and beliefs about preconception healthcare. Additionally, we sought to understand how and when men wanted to receive information on preconception health.

Methods

A survey study was performed using consecutive patients presenting to two primary care practices for care. Patients were recruited based on willingness to complete the survey at the time of their appointment, but prior to being seen by the physician.

Results

A total of 132 men completed the survey. Nearly all men (93.2%) realized the importance of optimizing their health prior to a pregnancy, and realized the best time to receive information about preconception health was before conception. The majority of patients surveyed (75.0%) preferred to receive information about preconception health from their primary care physician. Only 8.3% of men could recall their physician ever discussing this topic. The population studied revealed some significant knowledge deficiencies about factors that may threaten their health or the health of their partner's fetus.

Conclusions

A majority of men do understand the importance of optimizing their health prior to conception, and look to their primary care physician as their preferred source for such information. Study participants demonstrated deficiencies in their knowledge of risk factors that impact paternal and fetal health suggesting that physicians are not addressing preconception healthcare during routine care.

Background

Aging issues are becoming a very serious concern in many developing countries, particularly the health care needs and challenges of the elderly. Crucial among these are the sexual, psychosocial and somatic challenges facing the elderly, and the factors that may influence these. The Aging Males’ Symptoms (AMS) scale was primarily designed for international comparability on measures of quality of life (QoL) among the elderly. The validity and reliability of this instrument have been tested in Nigeria and results confirm its comparability with results from other countries. It is pertinent to examine the influence of some socio-economic factors on the self-reported severity of sexual, psychosocial and somatic measures on the AMS.

Methods

The AMS instrument was administered to 456 males aged 60 years and above in selected communities in Ijesaland, South-West Nigeria. The AMS has 17 items and scoring was done on a scale of 1–5 based on the level of severity. Three outcome variables for psychosocial, somatic and sexual scores were used together with socio-economic variables as co-variates. STATA 11 was used for the analyses, which included frequency distribution, chi-square test and logistic regression model.

Results

In the bi-variate analysis, wealth index was the only statistically significant variable for predicting the odds of each of the three outcome variables. A logistic regression model showed that higher education and middle income were significant predictors of high severity on the psychosocial score. Oldest age group, polygamous union and a high wealth index were significant predictors of higher somatic scores. None of the co-variates were significantly associated with the sexual score.

Conclusion

The study concluded that wealth index and other proxies of empowerment, such as education, to a great extent influence quality of life.

Therapeutic advances have dramatically improved health outcomes and life expectancy among persons living with HIV, but gains in life expectancy achieved by antiretroviral therapy may be mitigated by other health risk behaviours. HIV-positive gay men are especially at-risk for smoking and its adverse health risks. This scoping review summarizes evidence related to HIV and smoking, paying particular attention to gay men's masculinities as a means of providing direction for tailored tobacco cessation interventions for this vulnerable group. HIV-positive gay men face challenges with managing a complex disease and its psychological and social issues require tailored tobacco cessation interventions cognisant of the diverse social contexts in which they live. Although tobacco cessation intervention research among these men is limited, we make some recommendations to guide researchers and health care providers who work with these men.