Tasmania must "do better" to tackle the broad social issues impacting men's health, with new data revealing men and boys are significantly lagging behind women with the second worst health outcomes in the country.
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Tasmania's Men's Health Report Card 2019 was released on Wednesday, highlighting a number of areas of concern including that three in four Tasmanian suicides are men.
Published by the Australian Men's Health Forum, the report also found that five times more Tasmanian men aged 55 to 64 die from heart disease than women of the same age, and one in three men die from cancer compared to one in four women.
Other key finding included:
- 100 per cent of workplace fatalities are male (five out of five deaths in 2017)
- Three in four road fatalities are male, with more than 30 men and boys a year dying in road accidents
- Tasmanian boys are 40 per cent more likely than girls to drop our of school before the end of Year 12
- One in two Tasmanian fathers (50.5 per cent) are not married
- On in four Tasmanian children (24.5 per cent) live in lone-parent families
- The number of men not in the labour force has risen by around 154 per cent since 1978 - 22 times the rate at which the number of women not in the labour force has risen
The peak body advocating for men's health has called on the Tasmanian Government to invest more time, money and resources into improving the lives and health of men and boys.
AMHF president Jonathan Bedloe said the report card showed "we must do better".
"The solution to these problems is not to stop working to improve the lives of women and girls, but to increase our efforts to tackle the issues facing men and boys," he said.
"This means investing more time, money and resources into helping health services become more male-friendly and focused on the needs of men and boys.
"It also means looking at the wider social factors that shape men's health, which include boys' education, our experiences of fatherhood, our working lives, our financial wellbeing and our social connections."
When compared with other states and territories, Tasmania ranked seventh for men's health ahead of the Northern Territory (eighth) and behind the ACT (first), Victoria (second), New South Wales (third), South Australia (fourth), Western Australia (fifth) and Queensland (sixth).
AMHF chief executive Glen Poole said it was time Tasmania adopted a statewide men's health policy.
"The National Men's Health Strategy calls on governments at all levels to address the unique needs of men and boys through their policies, programs and services," he said.
"To date, just two sStates have developed a men's health strategy and most government initiatives to improve our physical and mental health aren't specifically targeted at men and boys.
"The statistics uncovered in our report on the current state of male health in Tasmania demonstrate that there is much work still to do.
"It's time for the Tasmanian Government to take better care of men and boys' health by developing a statewide men's health policy."
- Lifeline 13 11 14