Male Life Expectancy, the White House Gender Policy Council, and UFC
The White House can, and should, support everyone's health and well-being, regardless of gender.
First of all, happy International Men’s Day, whose theme this year is to bring awareness to and help prevent male suicide.
This week, a few items stuck out to me as important moments in regard to Men and the 2024 Election. First, on Tuesday, Harvard Magazine published an article entitled “The Male-Female Longevity Gap Widens,” with data showing that men in the U.S. now live almost six years less than women on average, a gap that increased since the onset of COVID-19 and increased by over a year since 2010. On the same day, President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden announced the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, an effort to increase funding for women’s health research. This is a project of the White House Gender Policy Council, with a mission to focus “particular attention to the barriers faced by women and girls.”
By contrast, Trump attended this Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event at Madison Square Garden, in NYC, when not dealing with his legal woes. He made an entrance to the arena that almost made it look like he was a UFC fighter himself. So in a week a major announcement about declining male longevity is shared, the Democratic President creates a program for women, and the Republican likely challenger attends UFC. Put together, these really exemplify my frustrations with the lack of attention paid to male gender issues today by the government.
Biden’s announcement in my opinion highlights the Democratic Disconnect with men, and it is something that requires a little nuance. First of all, I agree with the first portion of President Biden’s statement about the importance of health research released with the announcement:
“I have always believed in the power of research to save lives and to ensure that Americans get the high-quality health care they need. To achieve scientific breakthroughs and strengthen our ability to prevent, detect, and treat diseases, we have to be bold.”
I agree 100% — let’s use our nation’s vast resources and brightest minds to help conquer the horrible diseases of the day, such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS, and so on, for ALL of our people.
This latest initiative intends to close what they are calling the gender research gap. So, let me reiterate that I fully support funding research for everyone, including of course for women, and to the degree there have been research gaps, absolutely let’s close them. (Note: there are some medical reasons that women were historically not given experimental drugs; it wasn’t about discrimination, it was about preventing birth defects.)
Prior to 1990, there was a research gender gap, but there have already been multiple major pushes to eliminate it that have existed for decades:
There are no male equivalents to these offices focused on female health, and there is no Office of Men’s Health. I want all the women and girls in my life to get the best healthcare possible, but I want the same for men and boys. Medical researcher James Nuzzo compiled publicly available data showing that in fact since 1995, there has been slightly more research on women than men. In 2010, The Affordable Care Act (ACA) included a section on “Improving Women’s Health,” and in a similar pattern to what we see in the 2020 Democratic Party Platform: “…the ACA lists 134 references to women’s health, yet has only two references to men’s health without a clear definition or plan for these references,” per an analysis by Urology Times.
My question for Democrats is, does the existence of a research gender gap prior to 1990 that is for the most part (if not completely) closed, mean it’s okay to ignore male health issues today, in 2023? And would you rather lose the White House than simply have the Democratic party acknowledge the reality of male health issues?
I haven’t yet seen a high-level Democratic acknowledgment of the longevity gap, which I listed as a primary male gender issue in my first post, A Man Without a Party. It’s not listed in the Democratic Party Platform of 2020, nor in any other communications from the current White House administration that I’ve seen.1
So, let’s look forward to the fall of 2024. As I wrote in my previous post, Biden just polled at -18% vs. Trump among male voters in the six all-important swing states, which is not a good number for Dems. How does ignoring the male longevity gap and other male health issues energize and encourage male voters to vote Democrat in the election? How does that serve his male constituents, as is his duty, and the female voters who care about the men and boys in their lives? It doesn’t.
So, President Biden, you have an opportunity here: create a White House Initiative on Men’s Health and Longevity. Why not help men AND women — I’m not suggesting removing the funding for women’s initiatives, I’m suggesting ALSO vocally and financially supporting men’s health. It’s not hard. The White House can, and should, support everyone's health and well-being, regardless of gender. And its failure to acknowledge the male health crisis will make things more difficult come election time.
If you have such an example, please forward it. If someone sends something, or if I see something, I’ll update this post.