On March 17, 2022, the Interagency Gender Working Group’s Male Engagement Task Force (METF) hosted the webinar “Rethinking Men’s and Boys’ Healthcare Access and Use.”
The ability and willingness of men and boys to access health information, services, and products is influenced by wide-ranging factors, including social and gender norms and health system infrastructure. In this webinar, speakers showcased insights and learnings from global research and programming that supports men and boys in help-seeking behaviors and healthcare access and use across health areas, including family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH); HIV/AIDS; and maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH). Speakers also highlighted how to address gender and power dynamics and other social and structural factors that influence men’s and boys’ access and use. More than 190 attendees learned about best, promising, and emerging practices to facilitate and support men and boys as they seek and receive healthcare, and how to apply these practices to their own work. Featured presentations highlighted work happening globally and specifically in Brazil, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, and Nigeria.
Event recording in English:
Event recording in French:
Marcos Nascimento (Oswaldo Cruz Foundation) delivered opening remarks that provided global framing around how men’s health has been introduced and addressed over time and shared his experience with policy development and implementation in Brazil.
METF co-chairs Julie Pulerwitz (Population Council, Breakthrough RESEARCH) and Dominick Shattuck (Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, Breakthrough ACTION) moderated the panels, detailed below:
Panel 1: Major developments and newest thinking around men’s and boys’ healthcare access and use (including programming elements that seek to shift gender norms and address power dynamics that hinder help-seeking)
- Kathryn Dovel, University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and Partners in Hope-Malawi (PIH)
- Stella Abah, WI-HER
- Neeta Bhandari, U.S. Department of State, Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator/U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)
Panelists described their programmatic activities and answered questions that included:
- If you had to prioritize, what are the top two or three overlooked barriers to men’s and boys’ healthcare use? How can we best overcome them?
- How salient are the issues of gender norms and power relations for your programming? What recommendations do you have for the field in taking both into account?
- Where do you think the field is going regarding men’s and boys’ healthcare access and use? What will it take to scale up effective practices and lessons learned at this point?
Panel 2: Emerging innovations and practices for meeting men’s and boys’ needs and priorities around healthcare access and use
- Ehi Adejo-Ogiri, Jhpiego
- Charlotte Pahe, Population Services Kenya
- Vitumbiko Namondwe and MacBain Mkandawire, Youth Net and Counselling (YONECO)
- Dorcas Manortey, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Ghana
Panelists described their programmatic activities and answered questions that included:
- In what ways were masculine norms considered within the design of your programmatic approaches?
- Anonymity was mentioned by several programs. How was privacy and anonymity articulated to the beneficiaries of your program? How important was privacy for men?
EXPLORE ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Click on the links below to access the slides from the webinar and other related resources.
Do’s & Don’ts for Engaging Men and Boys (English, French, Portuguese, Spanish)
Brazil’s National Healthcare Policy for Men (PNAISH)
Getting to Equal: Men, Gender Equality, and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
Know, Care, Do: A Theory of Change for Engaging Men and Boys in Family Planning (English, French, Spanish)
Reflection and Action Tool: Integrating a Life Course Approach in Programming with Boys & Men for Gender Equality (English, French, Spanish)
Guide for Promoting Sexual and Reproductive Health Products and Services for Men
