Clermont, Florida (PRESS RELEASE) – A
new national survey about men and their cars is revealing
eyeopening
information about men and their health. The survey, commissioned by Orlando Health ,
found that more than 80 percent of men could remember the make and model of their first car, but
only about half could remember the last time they went to the doctor for a checkup.
In effort to change that, two of the country’s top men’s health surgeons are embarking on a
crosscountry
road trip in the hopes of getting more men to the doctor more often.
“Men need to take better care of themselves, period,” said Dr. Sijo Parekattil , cofounder
of the
the Drive for Men’s Health and codirector
of the PUR (Personalized Urology & Robotics) Clinic at
South Lake Hospital, in affiliation with Orlando Health. “It’s a message we want to get to as many
men as possible, and we’re willing to drive cross country to do it.”
On June 11, Dr. Parekattil and Dr. Jamin Brahmbhatt , the other cofounder
of the Drive for Men’s
Health and codirector
of the PUR Clinic, will climb into an allelectric
Tesla Model S and embark on a
journey that will cover 6,008 miles, will include more than 60 stops and will feature hundreds of
speakers, both at events along the way and online during the drive. The trip will go from Florida to
New York, then west to Los Angeles, where the team will arrive on June 20.
“We’re engaging the audience every moment we’re on the road,” said Brahmbhatt. “We have a
huge social media campaign, we’ll have videos and live webcasts from the car every single day and
we will feature about 250 presentations from physicians across the country, all focused on men’s
health issues,” he said. “You name it, we’ll talk about it. In fact, we want men to text us, tweet us,
email us, call us that’s
what this is all about. We really want to start a conversation about men’s
health, not just on this trip, but yearround.”
Although this is the second annual Drive for Men’s Health, it is the first time the duo will reach
the west coast in an effort to reach millions of men with their urgent message.
The Drive for Men’s Health started as an offthewall
idea in the spring of 2014. “On a daily basis,
we were seeing men come into our clinic who simply waited too long to get medical attention,” said
Brahmbhatt. “Sometimes it was heartbreaking. By the time they came in to get checked out, we were
diagnosing them with aggressive cancers or serious diseases. We wanted to change that, whatever it
took.”
Within just six weeks, the Drive for Men’s Health went from an idea to an actual event. “We know
men love cars and we thought rolling up in a sleek, hightech,
stateoftheart
Tesla would be a great
way to engage them in conversation,” said Parekattil.
Drive for Men’s Health will make stops at many of the top cities in the country, including
Jacksonville, Atlanta, Rocky Mount, NC, WinstonSalem,
NC, New York City, Philadelphia,
Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, and Phoenix. The trip will conclude on June 20 in Los
Angeles.
“Last year we had a following, a group of people that would actually watch us and thought it was
pretty entertaining,” said Parekattil. “In all we reached out to about 350,000 men through social
media and hopefully they got something educational out of the whole event.”
This year they expect more. “We’d like to make this global and get all guys to take more control of
their health and be more proactive about seeing their doctors,” said Brahmbhatt. “We’d like to reach
millions of men with this message, but even if we change one individual’s life through this drive, we
will have accomplished what we set out to do.”
To follow the doctors on their journey, support their efforts or to learn more about men’s health
issues, log on to driveformenshealth.com .
The new survey was conducted with approximately one thousand men across the U.S. and was
commissioned and released by Orlando Health , a hospital system affiliated with the PUR Clinic. It
was conducted by Harris Poll .