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Building Bridges – Promising Strategies to Improve the Health of Boys and Men

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Webinar recap

On June 11, 2024, the Interagency Gender Working Group’s Male Engagement Task Force (METF) presented the webinar Building Bridges: Promising Strategies to Improve the Health of Boys and Men by Promoting Social Connection and Support. METF co-chair Dominick Shattuck (Breakthrough ACTION, Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs) opened the webinar with an overview of the latest METF knowledge product, Building Bridges: Promising Strategies for Improving the Health of Boys and Men by Promoting Social Connection and Support, and highlighted the three elements of effective and promising strategies to engage men and boys along with programmatic recommendations to improve their health outcomes through social connection.

Jarrod Hindman, from Sources of Strength, then presented the Source of Strength Model. This model parallels other suicide prevention models intended for primary and secondary school students by being peer-led, strength-focused, and trauma-informed. It encourages participants to have hope, seek help, and find strength.

Next, Leila Milani from Futures without Violence in Tanzania focused on Coaching Boys into Men by using male adult role models for boys ages 9–14 and ensuring community buy-in to dismantle traditional gender norms and social pressures boys often experience in their pre-to-early teen years.

Following the presentations, METF co-chair Julie Pulerwitz (Population Council and George Washington University) facilitated a panel discussion with all three presenters. Webinar attendees participated in small group discussions facilitated by METF co-chairs to discuss what is being done and what can be done in low- and middle-income countries to promote and encourage social connection and support high-quality friendships among men and boys across life stages. 

Some key takeaways from the small group discussions include:

  • To understand social connection in context, we have to learn what it means to each group of interest.
  • Having health programs that focus on men’s and boy’s well-being can and will positively improve the health of communities. 
  • Getting community and family buy-in to interventions to provide support to young men and boys seeking to shift social and gender norms.

EXPLORE ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Click on the links below to access the recordings and slides from the webinar and other related resources.

Webinar slides

Webinar recording English

Webinar recording French

Other resources:

DO’s and DON’Ts for Engaging Men and Boys in Health: A Learning and Exchange Session on How to Apply Relevant Tools and Frameworks

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On May 18, 2023, the Interagency Gender Working Group’s Male Engagement Task Force (METF) hosted a webinar, “DO’s and DON’Ts for Engaging Men and Boys in Health: A Learning and Exchange Session on How to Apply Relevant Tools and Frameworks,” for more than 175 attendees. METF co-chair Julie Pulerwitz (Population Council) opened the meeting with an overview of DO’s and DON’Ts for Engaging Men and Boys, a guidance document that describes best practices and lessons learned for engaging men and boys in health promotion and gender equity.

METF co-chair Myra Betron (Jhpiego) shared how the DO’s and DON’Ts were used to engage men in the CHAMPION Project (2009–2014), a USAID-funded HIV prevention program in Tanzania. In interactive breakout sessions, participants applied the guidance to case studies of health programs that have engaged men and boys, identifying successes and areas for improvement. The case studies represented a range of health areas, including family planning/reproductive health (FP/RH); HIV and AIDS; maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH); and gender-based violence (GBV) prevention and response.

Participants also shared their experiences engaging men and boys in their own work, troubleshooting how to balance the goals of reaching men to address their own distinct health needs and facilitating gender equity within families and communities. METF co-chairs Dominick Shattuck (Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, Breakthrough ACTION) and Peter Waiswa (Makerere University, Agency for All) facilitated the question-and-answer and discussion portions of the webinar.

The discussions emphasized the following key points:

  • Formative research with both men and boys as well as women and girls is a key starting point to understanding norms of specific contexts and to informing intervention and messaging design;
  • There is a critical need to balance efforts to engage men as partners in FP/RH, HIV and AIDS, and MNCH services, while still respecting women’s choice and agency; ongoing monitoring is required to achieve this balance;
  • Interventions should work through a socio-ecological model to address not just individual-level barriers, but those posed by partners and family members and community and social norms, as well policy or legal barriers;
  • Positive role modeling of men as supportive partners and agents of change (part of the conceptual framework upon which the DO’s and DON’Ts guidance is based) is an effective approach for positive transformation of gender norms and practices; and
  • There is significant potential power in starting early in the life course to shape norms and behaviors.

Challenges and opportunities that emerged in the discussions included:

  • The importance of understanding men’s unique needs and designing services and interventions to meet them;
  • The challenge of meeting men where they are while still transforming harmful gender and social norms rather than emphasizing existing gender inequalities to achieve project objectives;
  • The need for advocacy to strengthen policies and guidelines for engaging men;
  • The opportunity to work with men across health areas to maximize positive outcomes; and
  • The need to identify simple and scalable solutions to engage men, such as leveraging existing groups or structures that already work with men.

Attendees left the webinar with the knowledge to describe effective strategies for engaging men and boys in health promotion and gender equity.

EXPLORE ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Click on the links below to access the recordings and slides from the webinar and other related resources.

Webinar Slides

Webinar Recording (main room)

Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting Breakout Group

Campaign to Increase Contraceptive Use and Male Involvement in Zimbabwe Breakout Group

Working with Boys and Girls to Decrease Risk of HIV Infection Breakout Group

Access to Sexual Health Services for Key Populations Breakout Group

Engaging Men in Antenatal Care in sub-Saharan Africa Breakout Group

DO’s and DON’Ts for Engaging Men and Boys
(English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Kiswahili)

CHAMPION Project

Male Engagement Case Studies

(Webinar) Addressing Gender Through Integrated Population, Health, and Environment Approaches

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Gender and gender equity play an important role in the health and well-being of people, their environment, and their communities at large. Integrated Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) approaches work to address interrelated challenges, and often address some gender indicators in the process. In this webinar, Kathryn Farley (International Center for Research on Women) will speak about the importance and methods of measuring gender indicators; Dorah Taranta (Pathfinder International/HoPE-LVB Project) will speak about experiences from a PHE project in Kenya and Uganda; and Craig Leisher (The Nature Conservancy) will speak about integrating gender into forestry, fishery, and conservation.