I work at a mid sized local public health department. DEI is very entrenched in public health, to a certain degree that's logical because we aim to improve health disparities, in practice it's usually what you'd expect... As part of this broad workplace cultural movement, they are trying to incorporate us staff to fill out diversity calendars to plan for events and what not, and do various things like write a brief article for internal communications, of course by having a public health slant on it.

Men's Health Week is in mid June, ending on Father's Day. Notabley, our staff is 75% or more female. I did pretty much everything to bring awareness about this but a few thought it could "overshadow" Pride and Juneteenth (also I'm gay, so that part was funny to hear). It's annoying because that doesn't make sense and it goes against reality if we actually look at health stats, men do have very poor health outcomes in key areas that could be improved upon by prevention or harm reduction/mitigation. There's tons of snide comments too I hear all the time in public health about men, very misandrist. Men are the only group who get blame for their health outcomes, the others are just considered victims of systemic oppression; it's just hypocritical.

Allegedly my workplace cares so much about mental health but isn't overtly ignorant of the fact 80% of American suicides are male. Somehow it feels like an attack to them when I mention this. We also focus on a lot on overdoses, which also are domaintlety male.

In my article, I bring up disparities men face that can reduced, such as suicide, HPV associated oropharyngeal cancer and low HPV vaccine rate, and higher rate of neurodevelopmental disorders and how those relate to having a higher incarceration rate. Among other things. I focus on how men's health impacts not Just each man as an individual but we also as each man is a brother, son, friend, father, or husband and how their health impacts us all.

Also I say "approved", but I essentially just refused to be told no. I wrote it up and I'm really proud of getting this through. I'm not an activist type of person but it feels a victory in that style.

I did have to throw the social juctice warriors a bone and tie it in with pride and Juneteenth. So I discussed a few domains where gay men and black men do particulary well.

The article is going to be reviewed by our equity team.. so let's see how they try to slander it.