Movember--Why?

Just wanted to put a link dump as to why I'm supporting Movember.

This is in addition to the fact that I'm going to be donating (up to my goal of $500) a matching donation to whatever I raise for Movember to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

The Movember Foundation has 3 main pillars:

• Testicular Cancer
• Prostate Cancer
• Men's Mental Health/Suicide Prevention

So it kinda breaks down into a physical health thing, and a mental health thing.

Some notes about the Physical Health thing:

• Cleveland Clinic's survey findings found that 61% of men neglect visiting doctors even when they need to go.
• ... 53% do not do testicular self-exams
• ... 56% keep health concerns to themselves and don't share them with anyone (not partners, not friends)
• Life expectancy for men is 5 years lower than women in the US (CDC US Health Findings)
• Conversations from the WHO regarding a "men's health gap" (I'll touch on this later)

Some notes about the Mental Health thing:

• AFSP says that on average there are 129 suicides per day in the US.
• Of those, 69.97% are white men.
• In 2017, men died by suicide 3.54x more often than women in the US.
• And worldwide, 3 out of 4 suicides are men

So there are tons of things to unpack here. I think the "men's health gap" is mostly due to an awareness and culture thing. Awareness, so that men know that they need to take better care of this stuff. And culture, in that the stigma about mental health and men's care needs to lessen.

Anyway, these are the reasons there's a need. So what does Movember do about it?

• Awareness: The movember thing I'm currently doing (much to most folks' chagrin--this mustache looks horrible), as well as advertising and health literacy campaigns for men's health.
• Research/Donations: Movember has partnered with 20 different men's health partners, over 20 countries, and funded over 1,250 projects to further the awareness and positive outcomes of the four pillars.

Additional info:

• CharityNavigator Rating for Movember Foundation
• Additionally, with my matching donation for ASFP, CharityNavigator Rating for AFSP 

I rarely spend a lot of time fundraising or whatever--I try to stay to myself. But I do feel strongly about these two organizations and I hope this helps you understand why I am personally supporting them.

The link to my donation page is here: https://mobro.co/ria