The Roundup contains information about all of the latest news, commentary, reports, surveys, issue briefs, charts, and fact sheets related to boys' issues collected by our staff during the preceding week.

News Clips

• Building a strong healthcare infrastructure for adolescents
  For a successful community to exist, a secure infrastructure is needed. So too in healthcare – routine preventive service visits and urgent care visits with sophisticated testing and treatments must be combined with the basic infrastructure of adequate access to food, dependable housing, electricity and transportation – all of which are essential in providing the elements on which good health is based.
  August 2013
  Current Opinion in Pediatrics

• Congress Urged to Expand Opportunities for African-American Boys
  Tracy Martin, the father of the African-American teenager who was shot and killed last year in an incident that renewed national debates over race relations, urged members of Congress to improve the educational opportunities of black boys.  Nationwide, statistics show that African-American boys tend to have poorer educational outcomes than their white peers. An Education Week report found such students aredisproportionately affected by school discipline policies, effectively funneling them into "school-to-prison pipelines."
  Education Week
  July 25, 2013

• Feds: Transgender teen may use boys' locker room
  The U.S. Justice and Education departments said Wednesday that a transgender California student who is anatomically female but lives life as a male must be able to use school bathrooms, locker rooms and other facilities designed for boys.
  Politico
  July 24, 2013

• Single Men Show Higher Risk of Cancer-Linked Oral HPV
  It's rare for men to contract an oral HPV infection, but single men and smokers face a relatively greater risk, a new study suggests.  The study, published online recently in The Lancet, followed more than 1,600 men to chart rates of oral infection with HPV, or human papillomavirus. HPV, which can cause genital and anal warts, is the most commonly transmitted sexual infection in the United States. Some strains of the virus can eventually lead to cancer.
  HealthFinder.gov
  July 23, 2013

• The gender gap on college campuses
  The Census Bureau's 2012 Statistical Abstract reports 916,000 women got bachelor's degrees in 2009 (the most recent year with full data), compared to 685,000 men. And that already large chasm is probably widening.
  Denver Post
  July 23, 2013

• Boys Who Like Pink Have Their Own Camp
  For four days in the summer, he joins other boys, some as young as 3, at a camp where they can express themselves as girls through high heels, make-up and lots of girly colors. Here, these gender nonconforming children are given an opportunity to be free of judgment and able to express themselves creatively, perhaps openly, for the first time.
  ABC News
  July 23, 2013

• Vaccinating Boys Plays Key Role In HPV Prevention
  Improving vaccination rates against the human papillomavirus (HPV) in boys aged 11 to 21 is key to protecting both men and women, says new research from University of Toronto Professor Peter A. Newman from the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. HPV has been linked to anal, penile and certain types of throat cancers in men. Since the virus is also responsible for various cancers in women, vaccinating boys will play a crucial role in reducing cancer rates across the sexes.
  RedOrbit.com
  July 23, 2013

• Teens' Self-Consciousness Has Biological Basis, Study Says
  Just anticipating being watched can trigger emotional response, researchers find
  Many teens are concerned about what other kids think of them, and this self-consciousness is linked with specific body and brain responses that appear to begin and peak in adolescence, a new study finds. Researchers put 69 volunteers, aged 8 to 23, in a situation in which they believed they were being observed by another person their own age and monitored the participants' emotional, body and brain responses.
  MedLine Plus
  July 22, 2013

• Kids with pediatricians also getting care at clinics
  Even children who have pediatricians sometimes get care from retail medical clinics like the ones in large drugstore chains, according to a survey of parents near St. Louis.  Almost a quarter of the parents surveyed while at a pediatrician's office had taken their children to retail health clinics, many saying they found it more convenient than going to their child's regular doctor.
  MedLine Plus
  July 22, 2013

• Note To Teen Boy With Blowgun: It's Exhale, Not Inhale
  Parents would like to think their teenage sons are spending the summer reviewing calculus. Unfortunately, at least a few of them may be manufacturing homemade blowguns, with unexpectedly painful results.
  NPR
  July 22, 2013

• Teenage boys at greatest risk of mental health need better online engagement
  New research shows that nearly one young man in five thinks his life isn't worth living. And out of all those surveyed, 42 per cent were experiencing some level of psychological distress.  The report has thrown new light on the need for mental health care providers to engage with young men online and outside normal business hours. It found that the traditional clinical model of care often failed young men, who are more at risk of suicide than any demographic in society.
  Australian Broadcast System
  July 22, 2013

• Student Health Plans Boost Coverage and Price
  Expanded benefits include prescriptions and preventive care
  Student health-insurance plans are getting better—and pricier.
  Under the Affordable Care Act, the minimum annual benefits limit of such plans will jump to $500,000 for the 2013-14 school year, up from $100,000 in 2012-13. And the cap will disappear for the 2014-15 school year.
  Also starting next year, student plans can't exempt pre-existing conditions and will be expected to cover the same 10 essential benefits as other individual health plans, including prescription drugs, preventative services and mental-health care.
  Wall Street Journal
  July 21, 2013

• Young men of color, breaking the school to prison pipeline
  The foundation recently introduced the Forward Promise initiative, a $9.5 million investment to promote opportunities for the health and success of young men of color — African-American, Asian, Latino and Native American — in middle and high school.
  The Grio
  July 22, 2013

• Mentally troubled students overwhelm schools
  “Schools are in over their heads with mental health,” said Mark Kuppe, CEO of Canvas Health, a nonprofit company that works with schools to provide mental health services. “They think they can hire a few social workers and school psychologists to deal with this, but the reality is those folks aren’t trained in the clinical work.”
  Star Tribune
  July 21, 2013

• Childhood Abuse May Add to Drug Users' Suicide Risk
  Doctors should ask patients about childhood trauma, researcher says
  Drug users with a history of severe childhood abuse may have an increased risk for suicide, a new study says.
  Researchers looked at more than 1,600 drug users in Vancouver, Canada, and found that those who had been victims of severe-to-extreme childhood abuse -- particularly emotional or sexual -- had a significantly higher risk for suicide attempts.
  Medline Plus

• Kids' health: Secondhand smoke down, binge drinking up
  Children's exposure to secondhand smoke is down, but binge drinking among high school seniors is up. And the total number of kids in the USA declined slightly between 2011 and 2012, as did the percentage of the population under age 18.  Those are just some of the findings featured in the federal government's annual statistical compilation on the health of the nation's children and youth, released today.
  USA Today
  July 12, 2013

• How to Talk to Young Black Boys About Trayvon Martin
  Eight talking points about the potentially fatal condition of being black
  Time, March 12, 2013

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