Men’s health the focus of new RACGP group

‘I am very focused on using this position to make improvements that are meaningful, that resonate with general practice, as well as men more generally. It is exciting.’
 
Dr Alex Romain, the inaugural Chair of the RACGP’s newest Specific Interests Group (SIG), Men’s Health, is keenly aware of the many ways men and boys lag behind women and girls, not just in health outcomes, and life expectancy, but in engagement.
 
The British-born GP can see great potential for system-wide improvements, from infrastructure to consultation style, on ‘how to make and design male-friendly services’ – and believes much of it can be driven by general practice.
 
‘We’re just starting from scratch, really, and we would like to integrate evidence that has been floating around the system for some time,’ he told newsGP.
 
‘It’s been growing over the last 25 years, but it’s time for the evidence to start informing how we work with men and how we function as GPs, because any major change and improvements that we’re going to see in men’s life expectancy is likely to come from general practice.’
 
It was reading the book by British author Richard V Reeves, Of Boys and Men, in 2023 that fuelled Dr Romain’s deeper interest in men’s health.
 
‘It made me question my own view of why men die 4– 5 years earlier than women in Australia, as somehow a natural consequence of largely unproven theories about genetic fragility as well as stereotypes about male self-neglect,’ he said. 
 
Dr Romain’s Vice-Chair is RACGP Fellow, Dr Greg Malcher, who Dr Romain credits for the formation of the Men’s Health SIG.
 
‘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,’ Dr Romain said.
 
‘He has been working in this space for over 20 years and knew that general practice needed to organise itself more formally to mount a meaningful response to an under-recognised issue.’  
 
The Men’s Health SIG was formally endorsed this week by the RACGP Board after being approved by the Specific Interests Faculty Council. It is the first new SIG for 2026, and the 39th in total for the college.
 
Its approval is timely, coinciding with the annual international Men’s Health Week, of which the focus of this year’s Australian campaign is ‘101 Reasons to Visit Your GP’.
 
For Australia, it is an aptly focused campaign, where male patients aged 25–34 see their GP an average of just 1.9 times a year, while women in that age group see their GP an average of 3.5 times a year.
 
And half of all deaths in males aged under 75 are potentially avoidable.
 
Dr Romain was drawn to general practice by the idea of being a ‘foot soldier’ in improving people’s health and wellbeing.
 
‘Any incremental changes you can make in general practice have the potential to make huge differences to people’s lives in a way that specialists don’t get to do,’ he said.
 
‘They don’t get the luxury of month-to-month contacts with patients, so over time, as you form relationships, you have the real potential to steer things in a different direction.
 
‘General practice is the main arena for any meaningful improvements to the health of Australian boys and men, so we’re a critical part of it.
 
‘We all have a vested interest in our dads, brothers, husbands, and sons being the healthiest they can be. I am excited to work with my GP colleagues across Australia in shifting the dial.’  
 
For more information on joining the RACGP Men’s Health SIG, or another SIG, visit the webpage.
 
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