Last Wednesday’s International Men’s Day marked a major step forward for men’s health and wellbeing, both nationally and locally.
I joined Gavin Pond, Co-founder of Nailsworth-based social enterprise Practical Intelligence, at Downing Street to celebrate the organisation’s transformative work supporting men’s mental health through creativity.
Practical Intelligence harnesses the power of hands-on craft to bring people together, most notably through its Pi-Guitars initiative, where volunteers hand-build bespoke guitars that are donated or sold to community organisations such as The Music Works and Stroud College. The project creates a unique wellbeing cycle—boosting mental health for the makers, the volunteers, and the recipients.
The visit coincided with the Government’s launch of the Men’s Health Strategy, a comprehensive plan to tackle the physical and mental health challenges faced by men and boys. Men remain significantly less likely to reach out for help, and suicide tragically remains one of the leading causes of death among men under 50.
As part of the strategy, the Government will invest £3.6 million over the next three years into suicide prevention projects focused on middle-aged men in high-risk communities across England. This includes a new partnership with the Premier League on the Together Against Suicide initiative with the Samaritans, offering matchday support and an online information hub. Locally, innovative schemes such as Football-on-Prescription continue to expand, tackling social isolation and improving wellbeing through community sport.
The strategy also commits to advancing research into key health challenges affecting men, including prostate cancer and alcohol-related cardiovascular disease.
To finish off the week, I also launched the world’s first podcast-on-prescription alongside The Grace Network and Craic Health. What makes this event different is that many attendees were actually prescribed by their GPs to attend. We’ve partnered with NHS Gloucestershire so that GPs can add podcasts to their extensive range of social prescribing options.
On Thursday we had the first in our new series with the comedian Jonathan Pie (Tom Walker), where we spoke about Men’s health, Tom’s own experience in managing his mental health and a busy touring schedule, and how we can reach out to each other when we are struggling. This will be available to listen and watch back very soon – keep an eye out on The Grace Network’s social media and website.
