Empowering good health heroes this Men’s Health Week

MEN’S Health Week begins on Monday, June 10, and this year’s focus is on empowering good health heroes.

Western Sydney University’s Centre for Male Health and Healthy Males have joined forces to launch the Good Health Heroes campaign, helping men improve their wellbeing.

The campaign focuses on the six key foundations for good health including regular physical activity, food nutrition, quality sleep, social connection, health literacy and reducing risk-taking behaviour.

Centre for Male Health director and Associate Professor Emma George said it was really important to be promoting and supporting the health and wellbeing of men and boys.

“Men’s Health Week is the perfect opportunity to make positive changes to health.

“Whether it’s building more physical activity into your routine, making small adjustments to dietary intake, catching up with a mate, or even booking in a health check with the GP.

“A lot of the time these things are overlooked when life gets busy.”

Men’s Health Week (June 10 to June 16) is an international event, with Australia focusing on messages relevant to men of all ages, spotlighting big health issues.

Geelong organisation Right Mate supports the local community with mental health resources and runs the local Man Walk group.

Right Mate co-founder Chris Lytas encouraged men to get proactive with their health and ask for help.

“Men historically are useless at going and seeing the doc proactively or doing stuff that’s actually going to be proactive for their health, whether it’s mental, physical, emotional, or any sort of type for that matter, we’re just not great at it,” he said.

Men’s Health week provides the opportunity to start talking about the ways health and wellbeing in men and boys can be promoted and supported within communities.

Mr Lytas said physically there were some very simple things men can do to ensure they are in a healthy state.

“You don’t have to be an elite athlete or super fit or anything like that, but there’s simple basic stuff you can do from a nutritional perspective, from a basic exercise perspective.

“There’s a tonne of resources that you can access and it’s as simple as just going to your doc and having a simple conversation.

“If you don’t have good physical health, you don’t have good mental health, and vice versa.”

Mr Lytas is encouraging men to take the 45 second quiz on the Good Health Heroes website, where they will learn the type of things they should be focusing on.

For more information on Good Health Heroes, head to goodhealthheroes.org.au