In­ter­na­tion­al Men’s Day (IMD) is be­ing cel­e­brat­ed to­day in over 80 coun­tries world­wide. I am al­ways im­mense­ly proud to fea­ture the fact that this day was first ob­served in T&T in 1999. Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh, a his­to­ry lec­tur­er at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus, found­ed this event, se­lect­ing No­vem­ber 19 to ho­n­our his fa­ther’s birth­day and as a re­mem­brance of our World Cup foot­ball sto­ry.

This year, the theme is Cel­e­brat­ing men and boys. The fo­cus is on ac­knowl­edg­ing and pro­mot­ing pos­i­tive male role mod­els and the im­pact both men and boys have on their fam­i­lies, com­mu­ni­ties and so­ci­ety. The ob­ser­va­tions al­so high­light men’s health, both men­tal and phys­i­cal.

As a sis­ter ad­vo­cate and IMD cham­pi­on, I am al­ways ex­cit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in these cel­e­bra­tions, ad­vo­cat­ing on be­half of all men in the name of my son, Jo­van Rav­el­lo, and grand­son, Ken­zo Rav­el­lo. My fo­cus, with my back­ground as a pub­lic health prac­ti­tion­er, is al­ways skewed to men’s health.

And this be­ing al­so the cel­e­bra­tion “Movem­ber,” men’s health is in fo­cus all month. Movem­ber is a move­ment for men’s health, start­ed in 2003 in Aus­tralia, which has el­e­vat­ed the fo­cus on men­tal health and sui­cide pre­ven­tion, prostate can­cer, and tes­tic­u­lar can­cer, three of the biggest health is­sues af­fect­ing men.

There are men who are very in­ten­tion­al about their health and well-be­ing. I have met some of them and al­ways re­main very im­pressed by their aware­ness, health lit­er­a­cy and de­sire to live a longer life in good health.

The wider ex­pe­ri­ence is that men are more silent about their health is­sues, are in de­nial or take an in­or­di­nate­ly long time to seek care and at­ten­tion. And ac­cord­ing to the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) and the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of East­ern Caribbean States (OECS) Com­mis­sion, the for­mer, the proac­tive men, may be too few among us in the Caribbean pop­u­la­tion.

“The sta­tis­tics re­gard­ing health-seek­ing be­hav­iours among men in the re­gion are pro­found­ly con­cern­ing,” a June 2025 re­lease says. “Afro-Caribbean men face an el­e­vat­ed risk of de­vel­op­ing more ag­gres­sive forms of dis­eases, un­der­scor­ing the ne­ces­si­ty for ear­li­er and more fre­quent screen­ing.”

Men’s hes­i­ta­tions to seek pre­ven­tive care, of­ten wait­ing un­til symp­toms are se­vere, lead to lat­er di­ag­noses and worse health out­comes for many con­di­tions, es­pe­cial­ly car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease and can­cer. Men’s stereo­typ­ing of be­ing sto­ic, strong and un­emo­tion­al pro­motes even worse men­tal health crises. Cul­tur­al fac­tors, such as the “ma­cho” im­age, dis­cour­age vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and de­lay care, es­pe­cial­ly cru­cial men­tal health in­ter­ven­tions.

But men are al­so vic­tims of sys­temic is­sues in pub­lic health sys­tems that of­fer in­suf­fi­cient men-spe­cif­ic ser­vices, or even men-fo­cused wait­ing rooms and wait­ing times, not af­ford­ing suf­fi­cient pri­va­cy when ac­cess­ing ser­vices. There is sig­nif­i­cant stig­ma too around men’s men­tal health and a lack of men-spe­cif­ic sup­port sys­tems for deal­ing with is­sues like de­pres­sion and anx­i­ety. These im­pact men’s help-seek­ing be­hav­iour. They are bar­ri­ers to care.

So, when we ex­am­ine men’s health out­comes, there is al­ways a dis­pro­por­tion­ate im­pact of ill­ness­es com­pared to women. The CARPHA/OECS ar­ti­cle cit­ed the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s (PA­HO) STEPS sur­vey (2022), which showed that “32 per cent of men aged 25–64 re­port­ed hav­ing un­der­gone pre­ven­tive check-ups, in stark con­trast to 58 per cent of women.”

That sur­vey, they said, re­vealed sig­nif­i­cant dis­par­i­ties in health out­comes across the OECS Mem­ber States.

“In Saint Lu­cia, men are 40 per cent more like­ly to suc­cumb to car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease (CVD) than their fe­male coun­ter­parts. Sim­i­lar­ly, in St Kitts and Nevis, NCDs ac­count for a stag­ger­ing 83 per cent of all deaths, with men ex­hibit­ing a 30 per cent high­er rate of pre­ma­ture mor­tal­i­ty com­pared to women.”

PA­HO’s NCDs pro­file for the East­ern Caribbean, pub­lished in 2020, says, “fur­ther il­lus­trates these trends, in­di­cat­ing that stroke mor­tal­i­ty rates in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da are 50 per cent high­er among men than among women.”

High­light­ing the Saint Lu­cia Min­istry of Health’s An­nu­al Health Sta­tis­tics Re­port (2021), they not­ed a trend in health­care-seek­ing be­hav­iour where “45 per cent of men on­ly pur­sued med­ical at­ten­tion when faced with se­vere symp­toms, in con­trast to a mere 28 per cent of women who de­layed treat­ment un­til an ad­vanced stage.”

Cit­ing a Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at study, Men­tal Health in the Caribbean: A Gen­der Analy­sis (2021), they say in Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines, men were 3.2 times less like­ly than women to ac­cess psy­chother­a­py ser­vices.

This find­ing, they say, “aligns with the PA­HO 2022 Health and Mas­culin­i­ty study, which showed 70 per cent of sur­veyed men across six OECS coun­tries as­so­ci­at­ed seek­ing men­tal health sup­port with a per­ceived ‘fail­ure to ful­fil mas­cu­line roles’.”

Our Caribbean men live short­er lives be­cause of these is­sues. As we cel­e­brate our men to­day, those of us who may be able to in­flu­ence their ac­tions are en­cour­aged to fo­cus on sup­port­ing their health and well-be­ing jour­ney. Let’s so­cialise our boys with a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the val­ue of health and help-seek­ing, to change the sta­tis­tics of men hav­ing low­er life ex­pectan­cy and high­er lifestyle risk fac­tors lead­ing to their ear­li­er demise.