Dr. Jamin Brahmbhatt and Dr. Sijo Parekattil, Co-Directors of The PUR Clinic (Personalized Urology & Robotics Clinic at South Lake Hospital, in affiliation with Orlando Health) contributed this post to Talking About Men’s Health
It’s no secret that most men don’t like going to the doctor. Admittedly, there are times even I avoid it. As men, we like to think of ourselves as strong, resilient and in control. But as a physician, I know the ramifications of what can happen when men put off going to the doctor for too long.
Particularly as urologists and co-directors of the PUR (Personalized Urology & Robotics) Clinic at South Lake Hospital in Clermont, FL, my colleague Dr. Jamin Brahmbhatt and I see it all too often; men experience symptoms they are too proud or embarrassed to talk about, and by the time they come see us, what once was a very treatable condition turns life-threatening.
Men are 24 percent less likely than women to go to the doctor and millions of men each year choose to live in chronic pain rather than undergo a physical exam. We knew that had to change.
One day last spring Dr. Brahmbhatt and I were discussing those disparities and trying to come up with ways to get men to be more proactive about their health. We came up with an off-the-wall idea: to drive home the importance of men’s health, what if we drove from Florida to New York in just 24 hours, engaging as many men as we could in as many ways as possible?
The idea caught on, and just six weeks later, during Men’s Health Week in June, we hit the road in an all-electric Tesla Model S. Men may not care much for going to the doctor, but one thing’s for certain, they do love cars.
A national survey of nearly a thousand men commissioned and released by Orlando Health this month found that 81 percent of men could remember the make and model of their first car. Barely half, however, could remember their last trip to the doctor for a check up.
If we are going to get men to make their health a priority, we have a lot of ground to make up.
On June 11 we will leave Florida heading for New York, then cruise west to Los Angeles. We’ll make stops in more than a dozen great cities along the way. In all, we’ll cover more than six thousand miles and feature more than 250 experts on our nine-day journey.
By the time we pull into Los Angeles on June 20, we hope to have reached millions of men with our message, which is simple, but urgent: make your health a bigger priority, not only yourself, but for the sake of those who depend on you.
If you want to follow us on our Drive for Men’s Health and join the conversation, we’d love to hear from you. Simply go to our website at www.driveformenshealth.com, sign up for our twitter feed and send us a message.
