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

• The Unsafe Sex: Should The World Invest More In Men's Health?
  On average, men aren't as healthy as women.  Men don't live as long, and they're more likely to engage in risky behaviors, like smoking and drinking.  But in the past decade, global health funding has focused heavily on women.  "Programs and policies for men have been "notably absent," saysSarah Hawkes from the University of London's Institute of Global Health. She and a colleague published a commentary in The Lancet on Friday calling for more gender equality in global health funding.
  NPR
  May 18, 2013

• A 'moral' issue: Vote on lifting Boy Scouts' gay ban divides members
  Tracie Felker and Joe Marion share a deep passion for Scouting. Each has a son who attained the top rank of Eagle, and each has spent numerous years and thousands of hours volunteering as Scout leaders, promoting Scout values. And that’s where they diverge. When the Boy Scouts of America votes next week on whether to admit gay youth as members, Felker and Marion hope for opposite outcomes.
  Today.com
  May 18, 2013

• Are Boys More Competitive Than Girls Because They Play in Groups?
  Harvard evolutionary biologist Joyce Benenson speculates that the instinct for men to align themselves in groups goes way back in human history. Men hunted in groups, and so they had to learn to get along quickly in a bunch, and this quality was supposedly bred into men through natural selection (maybe you got picked off by a lion if you didn’t bond with the group). Whether or not you buy this, Merryman and Bronson cite a 2004 study from Benenson that shows male infants as young as six months prefer photographs of groups to photographs of pairs or individuals. Girl babies show no preference.
  Slate.com
  May 17, 2013

• New Concussion Foundation to Deal With Ticking Time Bomb
  A new health epidemic looms on the horizon like a ticking time bomb. It is the spectre of cumulative brain damage suffered from repetitive sub-concussive hits to the head in football and other sports. A concussion does not necessitate being knocked out cold. It is a blow to the head or body creating a change in brain function. Research is now showing that damage is occurring in regular action to most football athletes on most plays. And none of it is diagnosed or charted.
  Forbes.com
  May 17, 2013

• Boston Children's Hospital Tackles Teen Records Privacy
  "The parent has sole access to the patient's portal until the patient turns 13, at which point both the parent and the patient can have access. At 18 years, the patient becomes the sole owner of the portal account, and we deactivate the parent's link (unless we receive court documents stating that the parent remains the medical guardian)."
  InformationWeek.com
  May 17, 2013

• Attention deficit leads US kids' mental health problems, CDC reports
  The most comprehensive report on specific mental disorders in children shows attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most commonly diagnosed problem in kids aged 3-17, with close to 7 percent of kids having a diagnosis. Another 3.5 percent have behavioral problems, 3 percent have anxiety and 1.1 percent have autism. For teenagers, addiction to drugs, alcohol and tobacco are the most common issues, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Thursday. These percentages translate into millions of children, said CDC’s Ruth Perou, who put the study together. She found that 6.8 percent of U.S. children have ADHD. “That’s about 4.18 million children,” Perou told NBC News. “This first report of its kind documents that millions of children are living with depression, substance use disorders, ADHD and other mental health conditions,” CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden said in a statement.
  NBC News
  May 16, 2013

• Anti-Gay Bullying Tied to Teen Depression, Suicide
  Suicidal thoughts more likely for kids victimized over sexual orientation, research finds
  Students targeted because they're believed to be gay -- as many as one in seven young teens -- are much more likely than others to be suicidal and depressed, a new survey finds. More than 10 percent of eighth-grade boys and girls reported that they're victimized because of perceived sexual orientation, according to a large survey of students in Washington state.
  Medline Plus
  May 16, 2013

• Draconian sentences are not the solution for adolescent criminal conduct
  Nearly a year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court reminded us of something that we all know and understand: Age matters. Children are immature and irresponsible. They do not appreciate the risks and consequences of their behavior. Biologically, their brains are not yet fully developed. They can fall prey to peer pressure and other outside influences. As they grow older, young people change — invariably for the better — even when they commit the worst of crimes. These differences mean that children require different treatment from what is appropriate for adults. Relying on this fundamental, common-sense and scientifically supported truth, the court’s decision in Miller v. Alabama barred mandatory life-without-parole sentences for young people who committed their crimes when they were under the age of 18. Miller restored some hope to the more than 2,000 individuals serving mandatory life-in-prison sentences for crimes committed before they were old enough to vote or serve in the military. Unfortunately, many of those now tasked with molding the post-Miller landscape have chosen to ignore science, common sense and the court’s command. Instead they have continued to call for lengthy, draconian sentences as an answer to adolescent criminal conduct.
  Courier-Journal
  May 15, 2013

• Recess Works: Playworks Implementation in 17 Schools from 6 U.S. Cities
  Students regarded the program positively and reported that recess was safer and more fun since Playworks was introduced. School staff and students also agreed that students learned new skills through the program. School staff at all schools overwhelmingly reported that they valued play in a school setting and hoped to have the program return to their school in the following school year. 
  Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
  May 14, 2013

• No Drop in Teens' Use of 'Smokeless' Tobacco
  Lower taxes on products like chew, snuff may be a factor, study says
  About one in every 20 U.S. teens has used "smokeless" tobacco products such as chew or snuff, and that rate hasn't budged since 2000, a new report finds.
  Medline Plus
  May 14, 2013

• Number of abused U.S. children unchanged since 2008
  The number of U.S. children who were exposed to violence, crime and abuse in 2011 was essentially unchanged from 2008, according to a new government survey. Researchers who interviewed 4,503 children and teenagers in 2011 found that two in five children reported being physically assaulted in the previous year, and one in every 10 kids was injured by that abuse.
  Chicago Tribune
  May 14, 2013

• Kids With Autism May Perceive Movement More Quickly
  Researchers say this might lead to sensory overload
  Children with autism see simple movement much more quickly than other children, a small new study finds. This extreme sensitivity to motion may explain why some people with the developmental disorder are highly sensitive to noise and bright lights, and it may be linked to some of the complex social and behavioral problems associated with autism, the researchers said.
  Medline Plus
  May 14, 2013

• Coverage Problems Could Still Remain For Young Adults
  Supporters and critics of the Affordable Care Act seem to agree on at least one thing: Allowing young adults to stay on their parents' health plans until they reach age 26 is a smart move. The change, which took effect in the fall of 2010, has resulted in more than 3 million young people gaining health insurance.  But despite the expanded choices, some may continue to face problems commonly associated with their age group—coverage for mental health issues, substance abuse and maternity care.  
  Kaiser Health News
  May 14, 2013

• Poverty as a Childhood Disease
  Poverty is an exam room familiar. From Bellevue Hospital in New York to the neighborhood health center in Boston where I used to work, poverty has filtered through many of my interactions with parents and their children.
  New York Times
  May 13, 2013

• Scientists Discover More Genetic Clues to Testicular Cancer
  Disease risk is strongly tied to family history.
  Twelve new genetic regions associated with an increased risk of testicular cancer have been identified by researchers in two studies. One study identified four regions and the other identified eight regions, bringing to 17 the total number of genetic regions associated with testicular cancer. The studies were published online May 12 in the journal Nature Genetics.
  Healthfinder.gov
  May 12, 2013

• Consider city violence a disease, prevent it?
  If violence is a virus, can you monitor “sufferers” to prevent further infection? The idea of tackling violent behavior like it is a health problem centers around the Cure Violence program, where “violence interrupters” attempt to stop the old phrase “violence breeds violence” from taking form. Gary Slutkin runs the organization, now entering its 13th year, in cities around the world. 
  smartplanet.com
  May 11, 2013

• Getting Serious About the Social Determinants of Health
  We have long known that factors outside of medical care — race, education, housing, income, and other social determinants — are the most important drivers of how healthy or sick we are. It is not new information that people of color get unequal health care and have poorer health outcomes than their white counterparts; what is new is how solid the evidence is becoming that race and discrimination alone, regardless of income or education, have a direct negative effect on health.David R. Williams of the Harvard School of Public Health gave a compelling presentation of some of this evidence during the recent kickoff meeting of the Roundtable on Population Health Improvement of the Institute of Medicine (IOM).
  Institute of Medicine
  May 9, 2013

• Are Doctors Diagnosing Too Many Kids with ADHD?
  Some boys may be labeled incorrectly with the condition, but undertreatment may be the bigger problem
  Yet although data point to at least some overdiagnosis, at least in boys, the extent of this problem is unclear. In fact, the evidence, with notable exceptions, appears to be stronger for the undertreatment than overtreatment of ADHD.
  Scientific American
  May 1, 2013

• Why my male babysitter freaks some people out
  I wasn’t trying to be subversive when I hired a male babysitter this month. But it is apparently something that few parents would do.
  Most are too spooked by Jerry Sandusky and the endless parade of other child molesters in the news. These creeps are almost always male, and they almost always find a way to work with kids. So parents aren’t being paranoid about the stranger danger that surround our kids. It’s a very real and totally frightening phenomenon. Still, here’s what I’m wondering: Have our fears turned us into a bunch of sexists? Just about every parenting forum across America has hashed out the question of male babysitters. (The opponents always vastly outnumber the supporters.)
  Washington Post, April 29, 2013

• Reader Reaction: Hating on my manny
  I received scores of e-mails yesterday from men who had spent their teens as neighborhood babysitters — way before male nannies — “The Manny” — became cool in Hollywood. And most of them were freaked that it’s become such a taboo. The online discussion about hiring a male babysitter, as I have done, was both thought-provoking and unsettling.
  Washington Post
  May 1, 2013

• 10 Mobile Health Apps from Uncle Sam
  Health Apps Set to Explode in 2013
  Will 2013 be the year of the mobile app? Pundits seem to think so, and the prediction holds true for healthcare professionals and consumers alike. Although developers have come up with several apps to help cliniciansdiagnose and manage disease, the use of medical apps among consumers is set to take center stage, especially in light of new patient engagement requirements that are part of the government's Meaningful Use Stage 2 program.
  InformationWeek.com
  January 2013

International News

AFRICA

• Boys die in bid to become men
  TWENTY-THREE South African youths have died in the past nine days at initiation ceremonies that include circumcisions and survival tests.
  Police have opened 22 murder cases in the deaths and an inquest is being held into the 23rd death, of a youth who complained of stomach pains and vomited. Initiation ceremonies are common in South Africa, where youths partake in various activities as a rite of passage into adulthood, usually over the course of three weeks. In addition to being circumcised, the boys and young men are put through a series of survival tests which sometimes include exposure to South Africa's chilly winter conditions with skimpy clothing.
  Perth Now
  May 18, 2013

AUSTRALIA

• Pumped: �boys who can't wait to be men
  Schoolboys wanting a hit of the latest bulk-building product or pill need not travel far. At Sydney's The Scots College, protein powders are supplied by teachers to adolescent athletes in the school gym. A sponsor of the school's rugby sevens tournament is Ultimate Sports Nutrition, whose products include ''hardcore'' anabolics, meal replacements and creatine ''to deliver explosive gains in muscle size and strength''.
  Sydney Morning Herald
  May 18, 2013

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The Boys Initiative is a groundbreaking national nonprofit campaign to shed light on documented trends in recent years pertaining to boys' underachievement and young men's failure to launch. For more information about The Boys Initiative, visit www.theboysinitiative.org.