Movember Foundation

BackgroundHigh rates of social media use and mental ill-health among young people have drawn significant public, policy, and research concern. Rapid technological advancements and changes in platform design have outpaced our understanding of the health effects of social media and hampered timely evidence-based regulatory responses. While a proliferation of recommendations to social media companies and governments has been published, a comprehensive summary of recommendations for protecting young people’s mental health and digital safety does not yet exist.ObjectiveThis scoping review synthesized published recommendations for social media companies and governments in relation to young people’s (aged 12-25 years) mental health. A qualitative approach was used to undertake inductive content analysis, where recommendations were grouped under conceptually similar themes.MethodsWe searched academic (PubMed, Scopus, and PsycINFO) and nonacademic (Overton and Google) databases for relevant documents. Eligible documents provided recommendations to regulators and social media companies that pertained to social media, young people, and mental health. This review excluded recommendations for young people, caregivers, educators, or clinicians surrounding strategies for managing individual social media use; instead, the recommendations emphasized the regulation or design of social media products and practices of social media companies. Peer-reviewed and gray literature from selected Western contexts (Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States) were relevant for inclusion. Documents were published between January 2020 and September 2024.ResultsOf the identified 4980 unique reports, 120 (2.41%) progressed to full-text screening, and 70 (1.41%) met the inclusion criteria. Five interrelated themes were identified: (1) legislating and overseeing accountability, (2) transparency, (3) collaboration, (4) safety by design, and (5) restricting young people’s access to social media.ConclusionsThis review emphasizes the need for multipronged approaches to address the rapidly increasing presence and reach of social media platforms in the lives of young people. These recommendations provide practical and tangible paths forward for governments and industry, backed by expert organizations in youth mental health and technology regulation at a time when expert-informed guidance is sorely needed. Rigorous evaluation of the proposed recommendations is needed while continuing to build on the emerging peer-reviewed evidence base that should form the foundation of policy and regulatory changes.

The COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, uncertainties and management inconsistencies have been implicated in men's rising distress levels, which in turn have somewhat normed the uptake of telemental healthcare services (i.e., phone and/or video-conference-based therapy). Given past evidence of poor engagement with telemental health among men, this mixed-methods study examined Australian men's use of, and experiences with telemental health services relative to face-to-face care during the pandemic. A community sample of Australian-based men (N = 387; age M = 47.5 years, SD = 15.0 years) were recruited via Facebook advertising, and completed an online survey comprising quantitative items and open-response qualitative questions with the aim of better understanding men's experiences with telemental healthcare services. In total, 62.3% (n = 241) of participants reported experience with telemental health, and regression analyses revealed those who engaged with telemental health were on average younger, more likely to be gay and university educated. Men who had used telemental health were, on average, more satisfied with their therapy experience than those who had face-to-face therapy. Among those who had telemental healthcare, marginally lower satisfaction was observed among regional/rural based relative to urban men, and those who had to wait longer than 2 months to commence therapy. Qualitative findings highlighted positive aspects of telemental healthcare including comfort with accessing therapy from familiar home environments and the convenience and accessibility of telemental health alongside competing commitments and COVID-19 restrictions. Conversely, drawbacks included technical limitations such as crosstalk impeding therapeutic progress, disconnects and audio-visual lag-times and the 'impersonal' nature of telemental healthcare services. Findings broadly signal COVID-19 induced shifts norming of the use of virtual therapy services, with clear scope for improvement in the delivery of therapeutic practice using digital modalities, especially among help-seeking men.

To describe a newly established international registry recruiting diverse patients with advanced prostate cancer across academic and community practices to address unmet needs in this population. Initiated in 2017, IRONMAN (International Registry for Men with Advanced Prostate Cancer) is a prospective cohort of patients with advanced prostate cancer. The study will enroll 5,000 patients with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer (mHSPC) or castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), recruited from Australia, the Bahamas, Barbados, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Jamaica, Kenya, Nigeria, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The study is collecting datatypes to study variation in care and treatment of advanced prostate cancer across countries and across academic, community-based, and government practices with a focus on clinical outcomes, patient-reported outcomes, epidemiologic data, biologic subtypes, and clinician questionnaires. Through July 2022, 2,682 eligible patients were enrolled in 11 of 12 active countries. Sixty-six percent of patients have mHSPC, and 34% have CRPC. On the basis of self-report, 11% of patients are Black and 9% are Hispanic. Five Veterans Affairs Medical Centers are enrolling patients. Globally, 23% of patients report being veterans of military service. To our knowledge, this is the first international cohort of people newly diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer designed to describe variations in patient management, experiences, and outcomes. IRONMAN aims to identify optimal treatment sequences to improve survival, understand patient-reported outcomes, and explore novel biomarkers to understand treatment resistance mechanisms. Insights from IRONMAN will inform and guide future clinical management of people with mHSPC and CRPC. This cohort study will provide real-world evidence to facilitate a better understanding of the survivorship of people with advanced prostate cancer.

Background:The need to better understand the molecular underpinnings of the heterogeneous outcomes of patients with prostate cancer is a pressing global problem and a key research priority for Movember. To address this, the Movember Global Action Plan 1 Unique tissue microarray (GAP1-UTMA) project constructed a set of unique and richly annotated tissue microarrays (TMA) from prostate cancer samples obtained from multiple institutions across several global locations.Methods:Three separate TMA sets were built that differ by purpose and disease state.Results:The intended use of TMA1 (Primary Matched LN) is to validate biomarkers that help determine which clinically localized prostate cancers with associated lymph node metastasis have a high risk of progression to lethal castration-resistant metastatic disease, and to compare molecular properties of high-risk index lesions within the prostate to regional lymph node metastases resected at the time of prostatectomy. TMA2 (Pre vs. Post ADT) was designed to address questions regarding risk of castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) and response to suppression of the androgen receptor/androgen axis, and characterization of the castration-resistant phenotype. TMA3 (CRPC Met Heterogeneity)'s intended use is to assess the heterogeneity of molecular markers across different anatomic sites in lethal prostate cancer metastases.Conclusions:The GAP1-UTMA project has succeeded in combining a large set of tissue specimens from 501 patients with prostate cancer with rich clinical annotation.Impact:This resource is now available to the prostate cancer community as a tool for biomarker validation to address important unanswered clinical questions around disease progression and response to treatment.

This paper details disruption and innovation in digital evaluation practice at Movember, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper examines a men’s digital health intervention (DHI) – Movember Conversations – and the product pivot that was necessary to ensure it could respond to the pandemic. The paper focuses on the implications of the pivot for the evaluation and how the evaluation was adapted to the COVID-19 exigencies. It details the redesign of the evaluation to ensure methods wrapped around the modified product and could deliver real-time, practical insights. The paper seeks to fill knowledge gaps in the DHI evaluation space and outlines four key principles that support evaluation re-design in an agile setting. These include a user-centred approach to evaluation design, proportionate data collection, mixed (and flexible) methodologies, and agile evaluation reporting. The paper concludes with key lessons and reflections from the evaluators about what worked at Movember, to support other evaluators planning digital evaluations.

Health outcomes linked to men's relationships have the potential to both promote and risk the well-being of males and their families. The current scoping review provides a synthesis of men's relationship programs (excluding criminal court mandated services) in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom to distil predominant program designs, access points, delivery modes and evaluative strategies. Databases CINAHL, Medline, PsycInfo and Web of Science were searched for eligible articles published January 2010 and June 2020. The inclusion criteria consisted of empirical studies focussed on relationship programs for men. The review identified 21 articles comprising eight focussed on Fathering Identities as the Catalyst for Relationship Building and 13 targeting Men's Behaviour Change in Partner Relationships. Findings highlight the prevalence of group-based, in-person programs which men accessed via third party or self-referrals. Fathering programs highlighted the impact of men's violence on their children in appealing to attendees to strategise behavioural adjustments. Men's partner relationship programs emphasised self-control amid building strategies for proactively dealing with distress and conflict. Program evaluations consistently reported attendee feedback to gauge the acceptability and usefulness of services. That most men attending fathering and partner relationship programs were referred as a result of domestic violence and/or intimate partner violence underscores men's reticence for proactively seeking help as well as the absence of upstream relationship programs. There are likely enormous gains to be made by norming boys and men's relationship programs to prevent rather than correct violent and/or abusive behaviours.

Prostate cancer is a heterogeneous cancer with widely varying levels of morbidity and mortality. Approaches to prostate cancer screening, diagnosis, surveillance, treatment and management differ around the world. To identify the highest priority research needs across the prostate cancer biomedical research domain, Movember conducted a landscape analysis with the aim of maximizing the effect of future research investment through global collaborative efforts and partnerships. A global Landscape Analysis Committee (LAC) was established to act as an independent group of experts across urology, medical oncology, radiation oncology, radiology, pathology, translational research, health economics and patient advocacy. Men with prostate cancer and thought leaders from a variety of disciplines provided a range of key insights through a range of interviews. Insights were prioritized against predetermined criteria to understand the areas of greatest unmet need. From these efforts, 17 research needs in prostate cancer were agreed on and prioritized, and 3 received the maximum prioritization score by the LAC: first, to establish more sensitive and specific tests to improve disease screening and diagnosis; second, to develop indicators to better stratify low-risk prostate cancer for determining which men should go on active surveillance; and third, to integrate companion diagnostics into randomized clinical trials to enable prediction of treatment response. On the basis of the findings from the landscape analysis, Movember will now have an increased focus on addressing the specific research needs that have been identified, with particular investment in research efforts that reduce disease progression and lead to improved therapies for advanced prostate cancer.

BackgroundKnowledge syntheses that use a realist methodology are gaining popularity. Yet, there are few reports in the literature that describe how results are summarised, shared and used. This paper aims to inform knowledge translation (KT) for realist reviews by describing the process of developing a KT strategy for a review on pathways for scaling up complex public health interventions.MethodsThe participatory approach used for the realist review was also used to develop the KT strategy. The approach included three main steps, namely (1) an international meeting focused on interpreting preliminary findings from the realist review and seeking input on KT activities; (2) a targeted literature review on KT for realist reviews; and (3) consultations with primary knowledge users of the review.ResultsThe international meeting identified a general preference among knowledge users for findings from the review that are action oriented. A need was also identified for understanding how to tailor findings for specific knowledge user groups in relation to their needs. The literature review identified four papers that included brief descriptions of planned or actual KT activities for specific research studies; however, information was minimal on what KT activities or products work for whom, under what conditions and why. The consultations revealed that KT for realist reviews should consider the following: (1) activities closely aligned with the preferences of specific knowledge user groups; (2) key findings that are sensitive to factors within the knowledge user’s context; and (3) actionable statements that can advance KT goals, activities or products. The KT strategy derived from the three activities includes a planning framework and tailored KT activities that address preferences of knowledge users for findings that are action oriented and context relevant.ConclusionsThis paper provides an example of a KT strategy for realist reviews that blends theoretical and practical insights. Evaluation of the strategy’s implementation will provide useful insights on its effectiveness and potential for broader application.