Promoting Healthy Families and Communities for Boys and Young Men of Color

This report talks about boys and young men of color who are at risk for poor health and developmental outcomes beginning at birth and persisting through childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. As a result of household poverty and residence in segregated neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage, they are disproportionately bombarded by environmental threats -- often without the benefits of supportive systems of prevention, protection, and care. This exposure to chronic stress undermines cognitive, social-emotional, and regulatory human development as well as the immune system. The parents of boys and young men of color are similarly affected, which affects boys directly in utero and interferes with their parents' abilities to promote their health and development and to protect them from harm as they mature.

• Structural and institutional reforms are crucial, most importantly policies to buttress household economic stability through the expansion of job opportunities. Tweet
• Other systemic reforms include expanding housing, child care, health care subsidies, and facilitating the involvement of noncustodial parents in all aspects of their children's lives, including their financial support. Tweet
• Focus must also be made on reducing the sources of chronic stress and trauma in the neighborhoods of boys and young men of color, investing in high-poverty neighborhoods to improve community resources, removing environmental hazards, and improving access to "opportunity neighborhoods." Tweet
• Family and individual interventions should target the entire life course, beginning before birth. Tweet
• Dual-generation strategies are needed to strengthen the caregiving capacities of parents, including noncustodial parents. Tweet