The Department published England’s first ever Men’s Health Strategy on 19 November 2025, to coincide with International Men’s Day.

The strategy includes tangible actions to improve access to healthcare, provide the right support to enable men to make healthier choices, develop healthy living and working conditions, foster strong social, community, and family networks, and address societal norms. It also considers how to prevent and tackle the biggest health problems affecting men of all ages, which include mental health and suicide prevention, respiratory illness, prostate cancer, and heart disease.

The strategy recognises the importance of meeting men where they are. This includes investment in community-based health and suicide prevention programmes and a new partnership with the Premier League to ensure men know where to go for mental health support.

We are now turning our focus to implementing the commitments set out in the strategy, including how partnerships and stakeholders can support and champion the strategy and its implementation.

Provision of these groups is determined locally by Governors, in partnership with NHS providers, which are responsible for statutory mental health services. The Ministry of Justice has not formally evaluated or assessed the effectiveness of such groups to date.

H M Prison & Probation Service takes an evidence-informed approach to interventions, and recognises the contribution that well-structured peer support can play in rehabilitation.

There has been no assessment made of the potential impact of the number of parental order applications for surrogate born babies made by single men in the courts of England and Wales since 2019 on safeguarding risks.

The Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service is responsible for making safeguarding assessments on parental order applications. All such applications are considered by the family court on the facts of the individual cases.

We are committed to working in partnership with men, academics, stakeholders, research funders, employers, service providers, and important sectors such as media and sport to implement the Men’s Health Strategy. This includes our Men’s Health Academic Network and Stakeholder Group.

We are scoping the work on media literacy and will consider the inclusion of issues surrounding anabolic steroids, image and performance enhancing drugs, and selective androgen receptor modulators.

The Renewed Women’s Health Strategy explicitly recognises that women’s pain is too often dismissed, normalised, or ignored, and treats this as a systemic failure, not isolated poor practice. It puts women’s lived experience, including pain and whether they felt listened to, at the heart of how National Health Service quality is defined, measured, and improved. For the first time, women’s feedback on pain management will directly influence NHS accountability, and patient reported experience measures will be embedded in core women’s health pathways.

To support healthcare professionals in the assessment and management of chronic pain, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has published guidance on this topic, which is available at the following link:

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng193

The guidance includes recommendations for healthcare professionals on how to carry out a person-centred assessment when an individual presents with chronic pain, how to develop a care and support plan for a patient with chronic pain, and how to manage flare-ups of chronic pain. The guidance also includes recommendations on both pharmacological and non-pharmacological management options for chronic pain.

Building on the NICE guidelines, the Royal College of General Practitioners has produced an e-learning course on chronic pain in adults, which is available at the following link:

https://elearning.rcgp.org.uk/course/info.php?id=588

The e-learning course aims to increase understanding amongst general practitioners (GPs) about chronic pain and to educate GPs and other healthcare professionals about the physiology of pain. It gives practical advice about how the NICE guidelines can be applied to patient care.

The Department has not held discussions with social media companies on content promoting anabolic steroid use and extreme body image ideals to young men.

However, in November 2025, the Department launched England’s first ever Men’s Health Strategy which sets out a bold vision to improve the health and wellbeing of all men and boys. The strategy recognises the role that the media plays in shaping how men interpret health information and commits to identify ways to build media literacy skills in men to help them critically assess health information and protect against misinformation that harms health.

More broadly, under the Online Safety Act, providers must take proportionate steps to reduce the risk of their services being used to facilitate illegal activity, including the unlawful supply of controlled drugs such as anabolic steroids.

The Government also supports clean competition in sport. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport supports UK Anti-Doping and UK Sport in their efforts to protect clean sport and educate athletes on the risks of performance-enhancing drugs.

Our first ever Men’s Health Strategy, launched on 19 November 2025, announced the Suicide Prevention Support Pathfinders programme which will invest up to £3.6 million over three years in areas of England where middle-aged men face the greatest risk of suicide.

Locally, integrated care boards are responsible for working with local authorities to implement local multiagency action plans. National Health Service guidance, including the National Suicide Prevention Strategy for England, strongly encourages systems to ensure staff complete suicide awareness training, such as the Zero Suicide Alliance and Staying Safe from Suicide. Further information on the National Suicide Prevention Strategy, staff suicide awareness training, and NHS England’s Staying Safe from Suicide guidance is available at the following links:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/suicide-prevention-strategy-for-england-2023-to-2028

https://www.lpft.nhs.uk/contact-us/need-help-now/lincolnshire-sucide-safe/free-suicide-prevention-training

https://stormskillstraining.com/2025/04/30/staying-safe-from-suicide/

https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/staying-safe-from-suicide/

The mental health topic guide within the general practitioner (GP) training curriculum also highlights the need for GPs understand and differentiate between stress, distress, mood disorder, and diagnosable mental illness. GPs should be able to communicate effectively, professionally, and sensitively with patients and assess risks to the patient’s safety. The assessment of risk and prevention of death by suicide is seen as a common part of GP work. The guide frames suicide as a critical component of risk assessment and patient safety. It states that GPs must assess risk as a priority, including risk of self-harm and suicide. However, the curriculum explicitly cautions that there are no validated scales that predict suicide and that clinical assessment must rely on history, context, and professional judgement.

The curriculum also expects GPs to understand the epidemiology of and risk factors for suicide, which would include the risk in men, as well as associations with depression and other mental illness, substance misuse, and adverse life events.

Our first ever Men’s Health Strategy, launched on 19 November 2025, announced the Suicide Prevention Support Pathfinders programme which will invest up to £3.6 million over three years in areas of England where middle-aged men face the greatest risk of suicide.

Locally, integrated care boards are responsible for working with local authorities to implement local multiagency action plans. National Health Service guidance, including the National Suicide Prevention Strategy for England, strongly encourages systems to ensure staff complete suicide awareness training, such as the Zero Suicide Alliance and Staying Safe from Suicide. Further information on the National Suicide Prevention Strategy, staff suicide awareness training, and NHS England’s Staying Safe from Suicide guidance is available at the following links:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/suicide-prevention-strategy-for-england-2023-to-2028

https://www.lpft.nhs.uk/contact-us/need-help-now/lincolnshire-sucide-safe/free-suicide-prevention-training

https://stormskillstraining.com/2025/04/30/staying-safe-from-suicide/

https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/staying-safe-from-suicide/

The mental health topic guide within the general practitioner (GP) training curriculum also highlights the need for GPs understand and differentiate between stress, distress, mood disorder, and diagnosable mental illness. GPs should be able to communicate effectively, professionally, and sensitively with patients and assess risks to the patient’s safety. The assessment of risk and prevention of death by suicide is seen as a common part of GP work. The guide frames suicide as a critical component of risk assessment and patient safety. It states that GPs must assess risk as a priority, including risk of self-harm and suicide. However, the curriculum explicitly cautions that there are no validated scales that predict suicide and that clinical assessment must rely on history, context, and professional judgement.

The curriculum also expects GPs to understand the epidemiology of and risk factors for suicide, which would include the risk in men, as well as associations with depression and other mental illness, substance misuse, and adverse life events.

I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to inspiring community members like Dan, who truly represent the best of Britain. Having an inspiring role model is vital for young men. That is why we are investing £500 million in our national youth strategy, which includes launching 50 new Young Futures hubs, creating more mentoring and youth worker opportunities.

Gareth Southgate’s documentary last month spotlighted some of the heartbreaking ways that we are failing too many young men growing up in Britain today, but it was heartening to see the inspiring work that Hitchin youth worker Dan Gaze was able to carry out with young men in my community who had found themselves in hard times. Both Dan and the boys at Hitchin boys’ school who were interviewed as part of the documentary were an absolute credit to my town, but how can we make sure that we are encouraging more men into teaching and youth work roles, so that every young man growing up in Britain today can benefit from positive role models across their community?

The UK Health Security Agency published a national Syphilis Response Plan in March 2026, which is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/syphilis-public-health-england-action-plan/ukhsa-syphilis-response-plan

The plan focuses on four key areas: preventing infection; improving testing; ensuring timely treatment; and eliminating congenital syphilis, where infection is passed from mother to baby during pregnancy. Actions include raising public and professional awareness, strengthening prevention activity, expanding and optimising access to testing, improving care pathways, and supporting partner notification to reduce onward transmission.

During 2025, national provision of doxycycline post exposure prophylaxis (doxyPEP) through sexual health services was implemented as a new intervention. This followed evidence of its impact on reducing syphilis incidence in clinical trials and real-world application. United Kingdom guidelines recommend doxyPEP for gay, bisexual, or other men who have sex with men and transgender women at elevated risk of acquiring syphilis.

Through neighbourhood health approaches, we are supporting more preventative, community-based models of care which bring together the National Health Service, public health, and local authority services, alongside voluntary and community provision, including social prescribing and wider support that addresses risk factors for poor mental health.

This is complemented by national action to support preventative mental health programmes, including delivery of the Suicide Prevention Strategy for England, targeting groups at higher risk, such as middle-aged men, and the Men’s Health Strategy, which includes initiatives to improve mental health literacy and engage men in accessible community settings

The Men’s Health Strategy highlights that improving men’s health will depend on how national priorities are translated into local delivery. For councils, this could include, but is not limited to, providing services at times and settings that reflect men’s working and family lives, adapting communication styles to engage and retain men, and ensuring staff are equipped to identify and address men’s diverse health needs.

The Men’s Health Strategy seeks to improve the health and wellbeing of all men in England, including by tackling men’s mental health. The landmark partnership with the Premier League brings together football clubs and the Government to improve health literacy, particularly around mental health and suicide prevention.

The Men’s Health Strategy also announced the neighbourhood-based Suicide Prevention Pathfinders Programme for middle-aged men. Through an investment of up to £3.6 million over three years, this programme will seek to improve the support available for middle-aged men in specific areas where they are at greatest risk of taking their own lives.

In addition, departmental regional teams work with and support local authorities across a wide range of portfolios that support action on health inequalities including mental wellbeing, children's services, smoking cessation, drug and alcohol services, physical activity and obesity, work and health, wider determinants of health, and health literacy.

Since the launch of the Men’s Health Strategy, significant work and focus has been on implementing the commitments set out in the strategy. For example, on 27 March 2026 the Men’s Health Community Fund, a £6.3 million programme, was launched in partnership with Movember and the People’s Health Trust. We have also established the Men’s Health Academic Network and Men’s Health Stakeholder Group to provide advice to the Department on implementation.

We will also work with the Men's Health Academic Network, the voluntary, community, and social enterprise sector, and wider stakeholders to develop and publish a one-year-on report, highlighting the improvements made and where future efforts will need to be targeted.

The Government recognises the importance of effective suicide prevention support for middle-aged men, who remain disproportionately affected by suicide.

The Government’s 10-Year Health Plan sets out ambitious reforms to shift healthcare from hospital to community, and from sickness to prevention, including transforming mental health services to improve access to treatment and promote good mental health and wellbeing for men and boys.

As part of this work, the Government is investing up to £3.6 million over the next three years in Suicide Prevention Support Pathfinder programmes for middle-aged men. These pathfinders will improve timely access to neighbourhood-based support and strengthen joined-up pathways between services.

The Government is also taking wider action to support men’s mental health through the forthcoming Men’s Health Strategy, which seeks to improve the health and wellbeing of men across England, including by tackling men’s mental health. This includes a landmark partnership with the Premier League to improve health literacy and engagement around mental health and suicide prevention, alongside work with employers to pilot approaches to supporting men’s mental health in the workplace.