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'This health inequity wouldn't be acceptable for other patients': RACGP launches Men's Health group

Royal Australian College of GPs

As Men’s Health Week comes to a close for 2026, the peak body for specialist GPs in Australia has endorsed the formation of a Men’s Health Specific Interest group to address the significant gaps in men’s health outcomes and engagement with preventive care.

The average Australian man dies four years younger than the average woman, and more often from preventable causes. Male patients also experience 1.2 times the rate of total burden of disease of female patients, and 1.6 times the rate of fatal burden of disease, after adjusting for age.

The group’s inaugural Chair, Dr Alex Romain, said “too often”, male patients’ worse health outcomes are treated as an unchangeable fact of life or accepted due to stereotypes about male self-neglect.

“Work like Richard Reeves’ book Of Boys and Men made me question my own view of why men die four or five years earlier than women in Australia, as consequence of stereotypes about male self-neglect or unproven theories that men dying younger is a ‘natural’ outcome of genetics,” he said.

“This health inequality wouldn't be acceptable for another group of patients. I wondered how did we even get here, and more importantly, what is the way forward out of it?”

He credits Dr Greg Malcher, now the group’s Deputy Chair and a GP colleague of Dr Romain in Daylesford, Victoria, as the driving force for the group’s formation.

“Greg recognised the scale of the problem he was seeing in his male patients and in Australia more generally, long before men's health was the subject of the kind of interest that it is now.

“He’s been working in this space for over twenty years and saw that as GPs, we need to organise ourselves to mount a meaningful response to an under-recognised issue.

“While we might not be the first patch in the quilt, general practice is the main arena for any meaningful change to improve the health of Australian boys and men. 

“We all have a vested interest in our dads, brothers, husbands, and sons being the healthiest they can be. I’m excited to work with my GP colleagues across Australia to shift the dial.”

In addition to promoting the importance of men’s health, the group will be an educational support, reference group, and networking body for GPs.

The 2026 theme of Men’s Health Week is ‘101 reasons to see your GP’, which RACGP Vice President Dr Ramya Raman said is a direct response to people finding excuses to not seek care.

“It’s too easy to not think about your health, especially for things you’d tell a friend to see a GP for,” she said.

“Compared to women, men not only visit the doctor less often, but when they do, the appointments are shorter – and usually happen when a problem has already become serious.

“We want men to see their GP, whenever they need to, and for as long as they need to.”

Dr Romain said part of the motivation for forming the group is to create momentum for change in the health system to support important reforms like greater funding for longer consultations.

“It’s essential to recognise that men increasingly need more time with their GP,” he said.

“We need a system that makes getting the help you need, including longer consults, easy for men. If long consults are poorly funded like they are now, cost is another excuse to avoid care you need.

“Funding long consults properly is part of addressing men’s health, and this Men’s Health Week, it’s time for politicians and policymakers to recognise and break that barrier by funding long consults.”

Key activities proposed for the Men’s Health Specific Interest Group include the development of a new RACGP position statement on men’s health, working towards a formal Recognition of Extended Skills in men’s health, and: 

• seeking out and enlisting GPs, GP registrars and pre-vocational trainees with an interest in men’s health
• encouraging GPs to build their skills via the RACGP CPD program to forge ongoing relationships with men who might otherwise not attend, fail to keep attending or defer attending a GP
• encouraging GP participation in adequately-funded programs and research in men’s health
• liaising with organisations with a key interest in men’s health including Healthy Male (formerly Andrology Australia) and Movember
• strengthening the capacity of the RACGP and the health system to provide quality care for all men and boys
• contributing to RACGP activities during Men’s Health Week and other community awareness-raising activities.

RACGP members with an interest in men’s health are invited to join the group and contribute to shaping its priorities.

~ENDS

About us:

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) is the voice of general practitioners (GPs) in our growing cities and throughout rural and remote Australia. For more than 60 years, we’ve supported the backbone of Australia’s health system by setting the standards for education and practice and advocating for better health and wellbeing for all Australians.

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