The men's health policy contexts in Australia, the UK and Ireland: Advancement or abandonment?

The state of men's health, internationally, is a deep public health concern. Despite pressure from the World Health Organisation that all health policy should consider the specific needs of both men and women through their push for 'gender mainstreaming', and increased interest in men's health, there have been relatively few gendered policy responses relating to men's health. In this article, we compare the men's health policy contexts in Australia, the UK and Ireland. We show that different advocacy groups have lobbied for men's health policies in these three jurisdictions and that different approaches have been adopted in order to advance or abandon men's health policy work. The absence of men's health policies or gender mainstreaming has severely limited the capacity to develop well-co-ordinated national programmes that meet the health needs of men and their families.