Background

RHP&EO is the electronic journal of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education

Go back to: Fads and Fallacies in Rural Men's Health Promotion

Background to editorial

This article was originally a talk presented to doctors and nurses by Dr Robert Hall at the Clinical Skills Update conducted by the Monash University Centre for Rural Health (CRH) in October, 1997 for Multidisciplinary Education for Rural Health Practitioners (MERHP) interested, along with emergencies and many other things, in promoting mens health in rural Australia.

Dr Hall's specific objective was to help prioritise issues in Mens Health and broaden perspective from a genital focus (perhaps transferred from the Pap Smear and Breast Self examination components by analogy to "Womens Health"?) and to encourage their effort into useful things that have been demonstrated of value to the community, and not just do things which are the flavour of the month.

Background on Dr Robert Hall

Dr Robert Hall was National Co-ordinator for the RACGP Training Program in Health Promotion Education in the 1970s. In the second half of 1978, he co-ordinated the production of a special "Preventive Care Issue" of Australian Family Physician for March 1979, as a community development project identifying effective practitioners from around Australia, arranging for them to describe concretely the work they were doing, and editing their manuscripts. He wrote the editorial and an article on "Preventive Care at the End of Life's Journey".

Robert prepared a section on Consulting Skills for RACGP's "A Manual for General Practice" and co-ordinated a national working group to collect and edit many contributions from GPs in all states of Australia for the production of the Preventive Care section of the Manual, which has since developed into the "Guidelines for Preventive Activities in General Practice" Fourth Edition, 1996.

Robert was co-ordinating author of a chapter "Preventive Care - Practice and Principles", where we outlined many practical strategies and tactics for family doctors to encourage health at many levels, as part of a textbook on Practice Management organised by Wesley Fabb and John Fry, published by MTP Press (1984).

In 1988 - 1989, Robert had a three month visiting fellowship with Professor Leif Svanstrom, Department of Public Health Sciences, Social Medicine Institute, Karolinska Institutet, (currently Norrbacka, SE-171 76 Stockholm, SWEDEN, leif.svanstrom@phs.ki.se) ) where he analysed and wrote up the findings (in English) of the Stockholm component of the WHO collaborative study on schoolchildren's health habits, comparing rural, town and city locations, and exploring family/social supports. Seminar paper: "Schoolchildren's Health Habits - Are Country Kids Different?"

This work led Robert to attend the WHO working group in May, 1989, near Seville, Spain, for Australian participation in the next phase of the WHO schoolchildren's health project, which has been taken up by the University of Melbourne Centre for Adolescent Health.

He has been closely involved with graduate education community health and hospital services across Victoria for more than twenty years, conducting multidisciplinary educational events all over the country, and was for ten years Director of Vocational Training at Box Hill Hospital.

In the 1990's, Dr Hall, as Senior Lecturer (Clinical) and postgraduate studies co-ordinator for the Monash University Centre for Rural Health, based in Moe, produced the elective teaching materials for the Graduate Diploma and Master of Rural Health, including writing the "Reflective Rural Practitioner" subject, and supervised Masters students undertaking change projects in small rural communities.

In 1995 96, Robert was the rural member of the NH&MRC Working Party of the Health Advancement Standing Committee on prevention of "Unintentional Injury in Young Males 15 29 Years", November 1996, to which the reader is referred for some specific strategies.

Go back to: Fads and Fallacies in Rural Men's Health Promotion

Internet Explorer 5.0 or later version gives the optimal visual effect of this website.