Do you put as much care into your personal health as you dointo the maintenance of your car? Ken Goldberg, MD, asks that question of allhis male patients.

"Rather than tell men to have their prostates checked or toguard against heart disease, I urge them to drop the 'bulletproof' attitude,get involved in health screenings and realize that diseases can happen toanybody," says Goldberg, who in 1989 founded the first center specializingin male health.

While men need to pay attention to their health, they also needto know where to go for help. Some in the healthcare field feel that thehealthcare community in the United States doesn't do enough for men.

No Leaders

"Nobody on the national or state level is leading thegeneral charge toward making men's health care better," says Goldberg."For instance, the National Institutes of Health has an office of women'shealth but none for men."

"We hear a great deal about women's and children'shealth," says Alvin Baraff, PhD, founder of MenCenter Counseling inWashington, DC "For male health care to improve, we must see more malehealth care providers in the media talking to men about their healthneeds."

According to the Men's Health Network, a nonprofit lobbying andinformation organization in Washington, DC, men's life expectancy in the UnitedStates is more than 10% lower than women's. Over the last 30 years, themortality rate has increased more for men than for women in every agecategory.

"Many statistics reveal that men suffer higher rates ofdeath and serious illness than women for most of their adult lives," saysMartin Miner, MD, of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care of New England in Swansea,Mass. Miner is studying 500 blue-collar men, aged 30 to 70, to find out whichfactors can pull them into doctors' offices for health screenings. Baldness andimpotence lead the way.

Care for the Whole Man

Many men don't know where to turn when they need help withgender-related concerns, such as finding a lump on a testicle or having troubleachieving an erection.

"I bet there are no more than five men's health centers inthe U.S.," says Tony Lanzillo of the New Jersey Institute for Men's Issues,a lobbying organization. "We want to bring men's health to leaders ingovernment, business, academia, and politics, thereby creating more men'shealth centers that will take better care of the whole man."

But some in the field don't think men's health is neglected."There is no office for men's health because for many, many years men werethe ones being studied in clinical research," says Ellen Pollack,spokeswoman in the office of research on women's health at the NationalInstitutes of Health in Washington, DC. "And those findings were used totreat everybody. This office was established to make sure women were includedin clinical studies and that the research was focusing on issues important towomen's health."

Perhaps the real problem has less to do with research and morewith conveying the results of the research to men. Baraff thinks the media canplay a vital role in this effort. "A good start would be health spotsduring sports shows," he says.