Context: Men’s Health has a high relevance for men and fathers. Men put less focus on their self-care than women, they live more risky, they subsist less healthy and they have a higher risk to commit suicide. At the same time we assert that the offers of health information, which are basically for Health Literacy, have to be strengthened. We determine a high need for a stand-alone offer, which focuses on boys, men and fathers. This offer should also emphasize the sphere of mental health, like it is defined in the Ottawa Charta of the UNO. Need: Moreover, the Exchange-Project „Health information for men and fathers in the Internet“ comes from the fact, that we as institutions, which educate men and fathers, communicate more and more via internet with our clients. This derives from divers facts. Our clients tend strongly to get informations about relevant topics from the internet. Our clients tend to exert the strategy to help themselves when questions and problems are arising Our clients often don’t have time to research for relevant informations during the normal working hours when our services are reachable. So they research at the weekend and use the internet for it. Our clients emphasize discretion, therefore they use the internet. There are two crucial points concerning this strategies: Many Websites with informations about health are commercial and don’t provide serious information. Many Websites with informations about health don’t provide the possibility to get in personal contact with the provider to receive further professional established information. Aims of the project: The project embraces five aims: We improve the quality of our work by a professional exchange of our concepts for adult education concerning men’s health for men and fathers We improve our information of adult education concerning men’s health on our websites We generate a checklist of necessary measures and resources which are needed for the development of adult education concerning men’s health on our websites We work out criteria, which are required for our target gourd to understand our information concerning men’s health We build up a network which ist generated by the common work on this project. By this we are able to execute further projects in future. Target group: Our target group ar men and fathers who search for adult education concerning men’s health for men and fathers on our websites. Essential working themes: As institutions, which are working in the field of adult education concerning men’s health, it is our goal to prepare a high quality fo adult education concerning men’s health on our websites. This includes the following themes: Improving the Health Literacy of our recipients: Health Literacy includes the knowledge, the motivation and the abilities of men, to find relevant health information. By this they have the position to evaluate and use this information in their everyday lives to keep or to improve their quality of live und health during all of their live ((https://oepgk.at/glossary/gesundheitskompetenz-2/, 9. April 2020). Seriousness of the information: This is vouched by the professionalism of the persons in charge Preparing the information according to the need of the clients. This concerns the wording and the graphic editing Easy-to-use preparation Necessary resources: Technical requirements for the preparation of the adult education concerning men’s health on our websites. Possibility to get in contact with our professionals: This will be granted by the seriousness and high quality of our adult education concerning men’s health Barrier-free access to our adult education concerning men’s health: Compliance of the relevant guidelines
The project comprised five goals that have been implemented in our project: We improve the quality of our work through a professional exchange on our specialised concepts for health information for men and fathers. This was implemented through the steering groups and the Exchange of Best Practice. The different standards and levels of knowledge that the participating organisations were at were thus brought to a uniform level. In the context of this work, clear demarcations had to be made to related topics such as the question of men's motivation to seek information on the internet at all, because this angle would have meant an increased research effort and would also have represented a missed target. Further demarcations were made with regard to social media and the topic of boys' health. In return, due to the increased expertise in the field of fathers' work, the topic of fathers' health always moved prominently into the centre. This also led to the project team deciding at the end of the project to dedicate a follow-up project to fathers' health. We are improving our health information for men and fathers on our websites. This will be completed after the end of the project, all partner organisations have already started during the project with any necessary revision. The difficulty with this is that, from our understanding, increased intuitiveness in the use of the website, combined with an inclusion and low-threshold strategy, would have meant a very high technical effort, which would have been beyond the financial means of the partner organisations in its final development. In addition, fully-fledged health information would have required the installation of an expert advisory board, which would also have meant financial expenditure for the organisation in question. With regard to this goal ("Improving health information for men and fathers on our websites"), we ultimately realise that significantly more financial resources would have been necessary, and in addition, a connection to social media has not yet been sufficiently addressed by the project team due to a necessary delimitation of goals. Based on the above-mentioned topics, we are working on an overview catalogue of necessary measures and, in connection with this, of the resources required for the expansion of health information for men and fathers on our websites. This objective is closely linked to objective 2 ("Health information for men and fathers on our websites"). When dealing with this topic in more detail, the project team repeatedly came up against the limits of what is sensibly feasible, because the path from a topic that is important to us to its presence on a website is extremely time-consuming to implement. This would have to be formulated in a "specification" for technicians, in which important elements such as the target-group-oriented preparation (choice of colours, choice of symbols) of the contents would be recorded. In addition, a graphic revision would have to be carried out. In addition to interactive elements, short explanatory videos are needed as a further element, as this is often the way information is currently consumed on the internet. In accordance with an inclusive attitude, these videos should not only be in simple language but also in the most important languages of migrants and immigrants. As a result, the information would not only have to be prepared for German, Italian, Hungarian or Austrian men and fathers, but also interculturally specified for men and fathers with international family histories. We discussed all these needs in our project and came to the conclusion that a sustainable implementation of men's health information on the internet needs a considerable lead time and that at a certain point experts from other sectors (internet technology, graphics, video production, social media experts) have to be involved because we lack the expertise from these sectors. This is always associated with increased reflection and costs, which we could not cover with the funds from the present project. So a demarcation was necessary here. However, it should be noted that the project team wants to address the issue and continue to work on it. The follow-up project "Care for Daddy" (see appendix 2) developed from this project is, from our point of view, the "necessary step back" into the development of professionalism for the topic of fathers' health, which should then be placed in an appealing way on the internet. With the focus on fathers' health, we have taken up a topic that is completely ignored on the internet and for which a high level of expertise is available from all participants. So, in a first step, the necessary expertise for the topic of fathers' health is developed and in a second step (follow-up project) our work results should be presented for the target group on the internet (websites, social media, Youtube channels). We develop criteria that make it easier for the target group or better enable them to adequately absorb our educational information in the field of men's health. In the course of the project, we realised that it is not enough to formulate baselines of low-threshold. It is much more crucial that at a certain point in time, which occurs rather early in the development process, programmers:inside have to be involved in order to achieve low-threshold and inclusion. In this context, we also note that an adaptation of health information on the internet is not only influenced by the content, but that the influence also takes place in the opposite direction, i.e. that the technical possibilities have an effect on the presented content. The catalogue of criteria can therefore only succeed in cooperation with internet technicians, graphic designers, video makers and social media experts. Unfortunately, all these resources could not be financed through this project. In addition, the time involved would not have been covered by the project funding. However, we identified this topic as a possibility for a follow-up project. In the end, however, we decided on a different topic (fathers' health) for a follow-up project. We are developing a network in which the basis has been created through the joint work on this project. This makes it a further consequence to develop a follow-up project that will create an intellectual output on our burning issues. This goal has clearly been achieved, as it is a clear goal for all project partners to continue working on the whole topic. For a successful follow-up project, we have focused on father's health in the area of men's health, since on the one hand there was a high level of expertise in our project team and from our point of view father's health urgently needs a theoretical and professional upgrading. The aim of the follow-up project is therefore to deal primarily with the agendas of this topic. As soon as the professional and theoretical basis for this has been laid, the implementation of the topic on the internet will be advanced in a next project.
Men's health is an important gender equality policy issue in terms of costs, privileges and differences between men. We see these three influencing variables as cornerstones of a triangle that encompasses the dynamics and theoretical field of movement in the field of equality-oriented men's work. All three cornerstones are in a dynamic relationship to each other. It is important that in the conception of a project and in its implementation not only one corner point is focused on, but all three corner points in their interrelation to each other. First of all, the costs of masculinity(ies) jump to the eye: Different data point to a number of problems in the field of men's health, such as the life expectancy of men for exmample in Austria being about 5 years lower than that of women or the significantly higher rates of lung cancer, accidents, suicides, alcoholism or addiction. This is closely related to societal expectations of men: a careful and precautionary lifestyle is devalued. (Media) images of men as tough and invulnerable dominate. Scoldings such as "warmist" or "corner brakeman" show this pressure on men to always be tough and willing to take risks. As a result, men overestimate their own resilience. Health considerations play a subordinate role. Risky behaviours in different areas of life (work, sports, nutrition, road traffic, etc.) already play an important role in male youths to perceive and show themselves as a "real guy". The differences between different groups of men are central to the health costs of masculinity/s: In many areas of health, the "social gradient" is more pronounced for men than for women, i.e. societal and social inequalities have a particularly strong impact on the health status of certain groups of men. For example, the life expectancy of men in privileged social positions differs only slightly from that of women. In socio-economically worse-off population groups, however, the life expectancy of men is all the more clearly below that of the female comparison groups. The highest health burden is borne by socially disadvantaged male target groups when traditional ideas of masculinity and, for example, scarce housing, low financial resources, working conditions that are detrimental to health, etc. interact. This is where the description of the costs of masculinity ends, as it is a cornerstone of the triangle described above. Privileges for men with regard to health can be seen where there is a "bonus" for men in the health system in case of emergency or seriousness. This means that more apparatus medicine is used for male patients than for women or that the reasons for rescue operations are taken more seriously. With regard to health-related physical norms, men are more likely to be overweight and are less socially devalued than women. In our view, it is a major shortcoming of the health system anyway that a large share of financial and other resources is invested in tertiary prevention instead of primary or secondary prevention. However, we see it as very crucial for the success of medical prevention that work is already done with clients in the primary and secondary prevention sector. We see it as a (misunderstood) prevention and intervention strategy of the health system that especially the tertiary sector is strengthened, which in its orientation is fundamentally oriented towards male privilege, since in medicine there is a fundamental resignation regarding the accessibility of men for primary and secondary prevention. Moreover, speaking with a certain macabre undertone, cost-intensive tertiary prevention is more lucrative for all involved (except the patient). So we see a privileging of men in the health system as too resource-intensive and at the same time too burdensome for men: Primary and secondary prevention should be started as early as possible. In this catalogue of measures, the accessibility of men via the internet and the analysis of the existing offers are part of the development of a meaningful men's health strategy. We are convinced that men can be reached well via professionally and seriously prepared information offers, thus enabling a sustainable prevention strategy. Last but not least, the diversity of masculinities is a highly necessary position that enables us as experts to initiate direct and low-threshold contact with clients. We do not see "masculinity" as a monolithic block that is unchangeable and given, but as an intersection of diverse and individually different intersectional variables of influence.