Men, Covid-19, the pandemic, and stressful life events – not a good mix. So much has happened since I last updated my blog. It has been an intense and difficult time for so many of us for so many different reasons, both related to COVID-19, other work commitments and life events that none can predict, but can hit hard. This blog tries to give an update on what’s been happening in my life since the start of 2020. COVID-19 and pandemic What became clear early on in the pandemic was the higher rates of severe disease and death in men. Working with the Men’s Health Forum [www.menshealthforum.org.uk] there was a need to understand what was going on. A key factor appeared to be a very complex biological sex differences in the immune system, which we tried to explain in one of papers we managed to get published over the year(1). We also held a number of webinars (with the Men’s Health Forum [GB], Men’s Health Forum [Ireland], Global Action on Men’s Health [GAMH] and for the journal Trends in
Last year we saw the ratification of the WHO Regional Office for Europe Men’s Health Strategy and the launch of their report. It was such an honour to be working the Gender and Health team as they worked towards this historic event. Having one WHO Region making the statement that the health of men and boys is important opens the door to others following suit and hopefully at some point we will get a global statement from the WHO in Geneva. I was also very fortunate to be awarded the William Evan’s Fellowship at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. Spending three weeks with Professor Dave Baxter and his great team at his Centre for Men’s Health in March 2019 was such an amazing experience. The rest of my year was spent on the State of Women’s Health in Leeds report, with the Leeds Public Health team and Women’s Lives Leeds. This may seem odd for a Professor of Men’s Health, but anyone who has followed my work will know that I have a strong background in collaborating on