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Across the world, men are dying years earlier than women, not because they are destined to, but because too many are living with preventable illness, untreated mental health challenges and cultural expectations that discourage them from asking for help. The greatest threat to men's health may not be disease alone. It may be the story society has taught men about what it means to be a man.

For many Black men across the UK, the Caribbean, Africa and the United States, that lesson was never taught directly. Nobody gathered young boys together and instructed them to suppress their emotions. Nobody formally explained that vulnerability should remain hidden. Instead, those messages were absorbed through observation. They were learned around kitchen tables, in workplaces, at sporting events, in places of worship and within communities where survival often depende