CRAIG REUCASSEL, HOST: Well, let's be honest – who puts off going to the doctor? There's a bit of a stereotype that men are most likely to put off going to the doctor. You know, men don't like to deal with their health problems. Dan Repacholi MP is the Special Envoy for Men's Health. He's encouraging Australian men to stop putting their health in a too-hard basket and book a check-up. It is Men's Health Week. We're going to chat to him now. Morning, Dan.
DAN REPACHOLI, SPECIAL ENVOY FOR MEN’S HEALTH: Good morning, Craig, and good morning, listeners. It's a pleasure to be here near the end of Men's Health Week.
REUCASSEL: Yes, have you been busy in Men's Health Week as their Special Envoy? What is a special envoy? I know ministers. What's a special envoy?
REPACHOLI: So we're just below assistant ministers and what we are, we're out there having the conversations, talking about the issues that blokes are facing and then go back and reporting back to the health team and the Health Minister and also the department to see what we can do to genuinely make generational change to have better blokes in this country.
REUCASSEL: And this is a kind of- this is a round you actually asked for yourself because of your own relationship with health and the own things you looked into. What have you yourself done to kind of change your health? What have you learned on your own journey?
REPACHOLI: So I've learned a lot, Craig, in this space. And I’m a big unit. I’m six foot eight already, so I'm a big guy, but I also weighed 152 kilograms. And I've been lucky enough that I've represented the country at the highest levels, and I've had everything at my fingertips to be able to look after my health, but I pretty much just ignored it. I didn't do anything right for it, like many blokes.
REUCASSEL: Yeah.
REPACHOLI: And I'm very open about my story. I talk about my story regularly so that people do feel comfortable with being uncomfortable and having these conversations. Because if we can't talk about it as people in the public eye, how do we expect Chris or Jason walking down the street here in the middle of Cessnock to go and say something about it?
REUCASSEL: Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, with the kind of conversations you've been having and using your own story, what have you been finding? Like, have we still got this reticence to go to doctors from guys?
REPACHOLI: We still definitely do because unfortunately, us as blokes, we put the health and wellbeing of everybody else before ourselves. So quite often it's number 10 on our list of priorities, and that's right at the bottom of our priorities. And what this week's about is getting those priorities just moved around a little bit to make sure that we're looking after ourselves as well. Like on Monday, we launched with Western Sydney University and Healthy Male, 101 reasons why we should be going to the doctors. Not the 100 reasons why every bloke can think about why we shouldn't, Craig, but the reasons why we should. And the big thing is, we really want good, healthy females. We want good, healthy males. Because if we can have both those, we'll have good, healthy communities at the end of the day, because there’s too many people, too many blokes and men and young men that are dying from preventable conditions and diseases that we’re getting, and we’re just unfortunately checking them too late. Four thousand blokes died of prostate cancer last year. Just under 4000 men died – one of the most treatable cancers we get is blokes. Bowel cancer – there's 54 blokes that die of bowel cancer every single week. And these are the conditions and cancers that we can treat the best with the technology we have. It's just that we have to get it in time.
REUCASSEL: We had this conversation about bowel cancer earlier in the week, and we had people calling up and going, yeah, you've got to do it. My husband did a test and got tested, you know, and it got fixed because he did the test. And somebody else who said their husband passed away because it wasn't found. And, you know, it really is a tragic thing. I wrote bowel cancer on my hand to go and do my test this week. I still haven't done it.
REPACHOLI: Yeah, that’s right. That’s exactly right, Craig.
REUCASSEL: It's ridiculous, isn't it?
REPACHOLI: It is. And this is why …
REUCASSEL: You mentioned younger men there. Like, it's a conversation. I'm over 50. I was catching up with some 60-year-old mates this week. A lot of talk about health amongst us. A lot of talk about check-ups. A lot of talk about what we were getting fixed up. When it comes to younger blokes, though, what are the check-ups they need? What do they put off and what are the dangers there.
REPACHOLI: Same as older blokes as well. This is all blokes. All blokes, we need to be getting to the GP and getting a blood test done every 12 months. If we can just get 10 per cent more Aussie blokes out there at the GP and getting a blood test, we will literally save thousands and thousands of lives in this country by that one simple little thing. And that's only 10 per cent more Aussies. And young men, there's so many young men, and young women for that matter, also getting diagnosed with bowel cancer too. So those test kits that are getting sent out to Australians, about 41.7 per cent of them are sent back. The rest of them end up in the bin, end up in the drawer, end up being something that you haven't done. And this is the only time you can send a pile of crap back to government in a letter and you'll get- it may actually save your life.
So these are the things that we should be looking at, should be doing. But if we could just get the priorities of the way we think as blokes, just to think of our health, just to put it a bit higher on that list and make sure that we actually do something about it every 12 months, that is a good thing. And an easy thing to remember, Craig, is on your birthday day, jump online and book in to see your GP for a general check-up, a general blokes check check-up, and do that every year on your birthday, because then it's simple to remember. And it doesn't have to be on your birthday. Just book it [indistinct]
REUCASSEL: [Talks over] Book a date. No, yeah, there you go. There's a birthday present from Dan. Book a doctor. Thanks for speaking to us this morning, Dan. Good on you. I like the thing about sending your crap back to the government. That'll motivate me to do it.
REPACHOLI: That's exactly right. Thank you, Craig, and thank you, listeners. Have a great day.
REUCASSEL: Cheers. Dan Repacholi there, the Special Envoy for Men's Health.