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About Healthy Futures
Adolescent and young adult males have unique, unmet health care needs in a number of areas, including sexual, reproductive and mental health, trauma and violence. The mission of the Ensuring Healthy Futures project is to engage a range of health care leaders, organizations and Federal agencies in a collaborative effort to develop and disseminate comprehensive clinical practice guidelines that will address these health care needs.
Who we are
In the Field: Recent News and Research
At a scientific session sponsored by the American Society for Men's Health (ASMH), which was opened by outgoing AUA President Dennis Pessis, a panel of urologists held a wide-ranging discussion about how urology might coordinate its role in male health care with other medical specialties. ASMH plans to follow up on its AUA session through conference planning for its December 2013 Washington DC annual meeting with the International Society for Men's Health.
Within the medical community interest in the subject of men's health is growing. Most of that discussion has focused on adult males. However, the unique needs of adolescent and young adult males, the frame of the Ensuring Healthy Futures project, are often different from those of adult males. The Ensuring Healthy Futures initiative has therefore begun to work closely with physician leaders in men's health to insure that work of the project is included in any efforts to move toward comprehensive care for males of all ages.
Boston Children's Hospital Creates ˜Living Practice Guidelines. ..... "efforts to set "best practice guidelines" have often drawn criticism from physicians and patients as "cookbook medicine" that could limit doctors' autonomy or restrict care for patients whose conditions fall outside the norm."
Now, though, Boston Children's Hospital says it has found a way to create guidelines that have reduced costs and variation in care while improving patient outcomes - all without angering doctors.
Kaiser Health News, May 6, 2013
Many medical guidelines don't consider costs.
Professional medical societies don't often consider costs when they're developing their treatment guidelines for specific conditions, according to a new study. Researchers found that just over half of the top medical societies with at least 10,000 members considered costs when developing best practices. The other half either implicitly considered costs or didn't address them at all. "Even when they said they looked at costs, they didn't seem to have a clear, consistent or rigorous way to do so," said Dr. Steven Pearson, the study's senior author and a visiting scientist in the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Medline Plus, May 7, 2013
What We Don't Know about Evidence-Based Programs for Youth. According to Child Trends: " In recent years both government and private funders have called for greater use of evidence-based programs and practices to serve children and youth. This is generally a good thing. We should fund programs that have at least some potential to improve the lives of children and youth. The good news is that there is a significant-and growing-number of programs with demonstrated positive outcomes. The bad news is that it is far from clear what distinguishes effective from ineffective programs. In other words, we don't know much about why programs work or don't." read more
Trend Lines, May 3, 2013
Resources we provide
In addition to serving as a hub for information exchange among project participants, the Ensuring Healthy Futures project maintains an interactive online compendium of research and information on adolescent and young adult male health, sponsors webinars and conferences and provides access to experts in the areas the project addresses.
Join Us
Join us by telling us about your interest and how we can help you in your work. E-mail Dennis Barbour, The Boys Initiative, or reach out to him at 202-841-7475
For daily updates on developments related to adolescent and young adult males visit our Twitter feed and Facebook page.
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