Tailor Made: A Pilot Virtual Weight Loss Intervention Individually Tailored for African American Men.

This study tests the acceptability and feasibility of the first virtual weight loss study individually tailored for middle-aged African American men. Tailor Made is a 3-month randomized controlled pilot of a weight loss intervention that included 58 overweight or obese African American men (mean age of 50.4; SD = 7.9). Control group participants received a Fitbit activity tracker and Bluetooth-enabled scale and copies of the self-led Tailor Made curriculum. Intervention group participants received the same Fitbit, Bluetooth-enabled scale, and curriculum and also participated in weekly, 45-minute virtual small group, professional-led education sessions using the Tailor Made curriculum and received three SMS text messages weekly: (a) a message individually tailored on African American Manhood that links men's values, goals, and motivation to health-promoting behavior; (b) a goal-tracking message to monitor physical activity, healthier eating, and lifestyle changes; and (c) a reminder 24 hours before their session. Participation rates in weekly small group sessions, randomization, and attendance at the assessments suggest that Tailor Made was feasible and acceptable. Only among intervention group participants, we found a small and significant decrease in BMI between baseline and final. In addition, active minutes of physical activity decreased for the control group while active minutes for the intervention group remained steady throughout the intervention. In sum, we demonstrated that a virtual, individually tailored weight loss intervention is feasible and acceptable to African American men. Participants valued the convenience of a virtual intervention, but there were a number of ways we may be able to enhance the potential benefits of this approach.

Individually Tailoring Messages to Promote African American Men's Health.

In this paper, we describe our approach to individualizing messages to promote the health of middle-aged and older heterosexual, cisgender African American men. After arguing the importance of being population specific, we describe the process we use to increase the salience of health messages for this population by operationalizing the identity concepts of centrality and contextualization. We also present a measure of African American manhood and discuss how manhood is congruent with qualitative research that describes how African American men view their values, identities, goals, and aspirations in ways that can be utilized to create more meaningful and impactful messages to promote and maintain health behaviors. Our tailoring strategy uses an intersectional approach that considers how the centrality of racial identity and manhood and the salience of religiosity, spirituality, and role strains may help to increase the impact of health messages. We highlight the need to consider how the context of health behavior and the meaning ascribed to certain behaviors are gendered, not only from a man's perspective, but also how his social networks, behavioral context, and the dynamic sociopolitical climate may consider gendered ideals in ways that shape behavior. We close by discussing the need to apply this approach to other populations of men, women, and those who are non-gender binary because this strategy builds from the population of interest and incorporates factors that they deem central and salient to their identities and behaviors. These factors are important to consider in interventions using health messages to pursue health equity.

COVID-19 and MENtal Health: Addressing Men's Mental Health Needs in the Digital World.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to be a source of stress and have important mental health implications for all persons but may have unique implications for men. In addition to the risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19, the rising COVID-19 death toll, ongoing economic uncertainty, loneliness from social distancing, and other changes to our lifestyles make up the perfect recipe for a decline in mental health. In June 2020, men reported slightly lower rates of anxiety than women, but had higher rates of depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation. As of September 2020, men sought mental health care at a higher rate than women for family and relationships, with year-over-year visits up 5.5 times and total virtual mental health care visits monthly growth in 2020 was up 79% since January. Because men are not a homogeneous group, it is important to implement strategies for groups of men that may have particularly unique needs. In this paper, we discuss considerations for intervening in men's mental health during and in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including current technology-based cyberpsychology options.

Art, Anti-Racism and Health Equity: "Don't Ask Me Why, Ask Me How!"

Objective: One of the fundamental challenges in research on, and the practice of, anti-racism is helping people open their minds to new possibilities and new ways of thinking. Design: This commentary illustrates how art can help people unlearn misinformation and narrow ways of thinking while enhancing flexibility that allows people to think creatively about efforts to eliminate or mitigate the health effects of racism. Results: Historically, art has been a critical foundation of the history of protest and struggle to achieve equity in the United States and across the globe. Whether music, poems, paintings or other forms of creative expression, art has been at the core of efforts to express emotion, communicate difficult concepts, spur action and change what seems impossible. Art has been particularly important in illustrating and helping to facilitate how people understand what racism is, how it feels to experience privilege or oppression and exploring the implications of policies and practices that affect health indirectly or directly. Yet, art remains underutilized in anti-racism education, training and organizing efforts within public health. This commentary includes several arts-based examples to illustrate how art can facilitate insights, observations and strategies to address racism and achieve health equity. Conclusion: Art can be an important tool to facilitate moving past intellectual arguments that seek to explain, justify and excuse racism. Art may be particularly important in efforts to illuminate how racism operates in organizational or institutional contexts and to communicate hope, resilience, and strength amid what seems impossible.

Men and COVID-19: A Biopsychosocial Approach to Understanding Sex Differences in Mortality and Recommendations for Practice and Policy Interventions.

Data suggest that more men than women are dying of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) worldwide, but it is unclear why. A biopsychosocial approach is critical for understanding the disproportionate death rate among men. Biological, psychological, behavioral, and social factors may put men at disproportionate risk of death. We propose a stepwise approach to clinical, public health, and policy interventions to reduce COVID-19-associated morbidity and mortality among men. We also review what health professionals and policy makers can do, and are doing, to address the unique COVID-19-associated needs of men.

The Tennessee Men's Health Report Card: A Model for Men's Health Policy Advocacy and Education.

Tennessee is the only state in the United States that has regularly published a document monitoring men's health and assessing men's health disparities. Vanderbilt University, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the Tennessee Department of Health, Meharry Medical College, Tennessee Men's Health Network, and health providers and advocates across the state have come together to publish a set of indicators as the Tennessee Men's Health Report Card (TMHRC). This article describes the origins, structure, development, and lessons learned from publishing report cards in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2017. The report card highlights statistically significant changes in trends over time, identifies racial, ethnic, age, and geographic differences among men, highlights connections to regional and statewide public health initiatives, and suggests priorities for improving men's health in Tennessee. State data were compared to Healthy People 2020 Objectives and graded based on the degree of discrepancy between the goal and the current reality for Tennessee men. Over the four iterations of the report card, the TMHRC team has made significant adjustments to the ways they analyze and present the data, utilize grades and graphics, consider the implications of the data for the economic well-being of the state, and disseminate the findings across the state to different stakeholders. It is important to go beyond creating a summary of information; rather, data should be shared in ways that are easily understood, actionable, and applicable to different audiences. It is also critical to highlight promising policy and programmatic initiatives to improve men's health in the state.