A growing number of older men are living alone. They are often referred to as an at-risk group in health-care systems. The purpose of this article is to establish an overview of these men's health and health-care utilisation. We do so by drawing on three sources: an online survey with health-care professionals, data from a national self-report health study and register-based data on health-care utilisation. The results show that older men living alone generally have lower health scores than older men co-habiting and that, among older men living alone, lower educational level is associated with lower health scores but also a greater use of free-of-charge health-care services. Health-care professionals conducting preventive home visits consider older men's social needs the most pronounced problem for the men's wellbeing and call for new services to be custom made for them. In this article, we discuss differences between older men living in rural and urban areas and between those who are single, divorced or widowed. We conclude that health and social care systems must differentiate between sub-groups of older men living alone when developing new services and that free-of-charge services, such as general practitioners and home care, should be considered as vehicles for addressing health inequities.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, men have been consistently less likely to report wearing a protective face mask. There are several possible reasons for this difference, including partisanship and gender identity. Using a national live-caller telephone survey that measures gender identity, we show that men's gender identities are strongly related to their views of mask wearing, especially when gender identity is highly salient to the individual. The effects of this interaction of sex and gender are shown to be separate from the effects of partisanship. While partisanship is a significant driver of attitudes about face masks, within partisan groups, men who report “completely” masculine gender identities are very different from their fellow partisans.

Although there are often clear benefits from health screening strategies there is also evidence that some individuals experience emotional difficulties when participating, these reactions are often as a result of inconclusive or equivocal results from the screening tests. Most of the research literature explores this from a female perspective – there is less evidence of how men experience the uncertainties of screening. This article presents findings from a qualitative research study exploring the experiences of men who received equivocal results when participating in prostate specific antigen (PSA) testing. The men were drawn from a larger clinical trial to identify men with early signs of prostate cancer. In-depth interviews were conducted with seven men from one general practice in the North of England who had received an equivocal result from PSA testing and subsequent prostate biopsy. Phenomenological analysis revealed five inter-related themes in the men's experiences. The theme pre-conceptions centred around men's beliefs about the links between early diagnosis and was linked to their perceptions about responsibility towards their own health. However, men also reported feelings of uncertainty when receiving results that did not definitely indicate they did or did not have prostate cancer. This uncertainty generated reactions of stoicism towards the equivocal result and subsequent participation in further investigations. However, men also reported that participation in PSA screening did make them feel ‘looked after’. These findings are closely comparable with the literature on women's reactions to screening test uncertainty. This is possibly heightened by the lack of clear evidence about the accuracy of PSA testing to detect prostate cancer. These men participated in order to find out if they had prostate cancer or not and seemed unprepared for the possibility of an equivocal result.