Men’s Proactive Healthcare Initiative is Dedicated to Improving the Health of Men

Hello, I am Minor King, President and CEO of Men’s Proactive Healthcare Initiative. We are a 501C(3) organization dedicated to improving the health of men as well as addressing whole family health care concerns. Studies have found that men do not always take care of themselves as well as they should. It is widely recognized that men are less likely than women to access or engage with a range of health programs across a diversity of settings. After several group discussions, and seeing this discrepancy, we organized in 2023 with the purpose of promoting men’s health through workshops, and events that support men and their family’s well-being.

To inspire men to address physical awareness about health issues, “The goal of the Men’s Proactive Healthcare Initiative” (MPHI), is to influence men to see their physician and be screened for various diseases that better respond to treatment if detected early. This includes promoting annual checkups, where many health problems can be identified and treated before they become more serious or even life-threatening.

Currently absent from the men’s health literature is practical guidance on approaches to men’s health program design—those which seek to quell harmful gender norms and purposefully promote health equity across issues. Programmatic efforts that support the behavioral health, positive development, and social relationships of Black men translate into positive families, communities, and experiences as they live, learn, love, and work over the life course (American Journal of Men’s Health, 2020). Designing health programs that mitigate barriers associated with normative ideals of masculinity has been widely viewed as a key factor in how health systems should respond.  Unfortunately, strategies engaging men often have narrowly conceptualized male health behavior and risk inadvertently reinforcing negative and outdated gender stereotypes.

In cooperation with the Milwaukee Urban League, and other community groups, we propose utilizing a novel gender-transformative conceptual model to sponsor events that help encourage men’s proactive healthcare through dissemination of information, discussions, and hands on group presentations. Gender-transformative refers to a set of beliefs, expectations, actions, and embodied practices such as self-reliance, dominance, self-perceived invulnerability, or emotional control typically associated with risk-taking and decreased likelihood to seek help or ‘talk’. Utilizing this model, our ultimate goal is to tailor our healthcare programs to improve accessibility, engagement, and appropriateness for men and their families.

Please feel free to reach out with any additional questions or interest in engaging with our program or in joining this effort.

Sincerely,

Minor King, President & CEO