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males. Reproductive health programs, including sexuality education that provide young Latino men with life planning and general life skills (i.e., opportunities for educational and career advancement), combined with reproductive health knowledge and skills in developmentally appropriate ways can help to reduce the risk of STIs and teen fatherhood. Replication and adaptation of effective programs in Latino communities is needed. Secondly, there is a need to increase Latino men’s access to health care services, including family planning/reproductive health care services. Through outreach and prevention education programs, Latino youth need to be informed of health services and programs available to them. Young men are eligible for family planning services through Medicaid waivers in eight out of the twentysix states with such waivers, including New York and California, yet they are a small minority of the clients served in these states (Guttmacher Institute 2006). Eligibility requirements can be expanded to include males and teens in states with family planning Medicaid waivers and new states can be encouraged and helped to apply for waivers that include males and teens. Medicaid coverage could be extended to undocumented and uninsured persons as well as migrant workers. Medicaid clients could be allowed to use services across state lines by developing a traveling Medicaid card, thereby increasing health care access particularly among migrant farm-working families (Rosenbaum and Shin 2005). There is a need to develop strategies to reduce barriers to care related to cost, transportation, stigma, and embarrassment associated with accessing family planning/reproductive health services, confidentiality, cultural competency, and limited language proficiency. Finally, reproductive health care services could be expanded to include male-oriented exams, contraceptive counseling, and STI testing. Our third policy recommendation is to develop and provide youth with male-friendly, youth-friendly, and culturally and linguistically competent health care services. To achieve this, written materials should be available in appropriate languages, sensitive to cultural beliefs, and at appropriate reading levels. Input from young Latino males in the development and distribution of these materials can help to increase the effectiveness of these materials. Culturally competent services should respect and acknowledge cultural norms and values and understand the role of families in shaping youths’ lives. A more male-friendly health care setting could be achieved by including maleoriented themes in the waiting room and using male Latino peer providers in the clinic. Finally, a “best practices” model could be developed from health care settings that have been successful at serving young Latino males—for example, the Young Men’s Clinic of the Columbia and New York Presbyterian The Sexual and Reproductive Health of Young Latinos 95 Hospital and the University of California’s New Generation Health Center in San Francisco. The fourth policy recommendation to ensure the optimal reproductive health of Latino young men is to emphasize that they stay in school and go on to college. Several steps need to be taken to achieve this goal. For example, national and local initiatives to promote Latino youths’ academic success and to prevent school dropout, truancy, and suspension, and to strengthen students ’ commitment to school, could be developed. Such programs should involve parents, students, and community-based organizations. The education of one generation will have a large impact on the next generation of teens. Efforts should be targeted at schools with particularly high Latino populations and high dropout rates and tailored to specific community and cultural contexts . Programs should address factors including linguistic access to education, youths’ financial obstacles, teacher and administration support for Latino youths’ academic success, and parental involvement; efforts should also involve evaluation and replication of effective programs (Brewster and Bowen 2004; Hernandez and Nesman 2004; Jurkovic et al. 2004). Our final recommendation is to provide expanded funding for basic and applied health research. Sexual behaviors and health outcomes vary among subgroups of Latino males based on factors such as country of origin, generational status, and socioeconomic status. Further research focusing on sexual health predictors and HIV/STI and early pregnancy prevention is needed for subgroups of young Latino males. Studies should increase their focus on differences among Latino subgroups based on country of origin, generation status, acculturation, same-sex behavior, and other factors. National data pertaining to Latino youth in the United States are currently limited by insufficient sample sizes and insufficient focus on diversity of youth surveyed; future large-scale data collection efforts involving Latino youth should aim to obtain large representative samples and ensure relevant diversity, so as to have sufficient...

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