Decor aside, federal health officials still aren't entirely sure how best to connect with men. Rather than go it alone, the agency is working through community-based organizations with a special interest in males, including Boys and Girls clubs and Concerned Black Men programs, as well as regional family planning clinics and state and county health departments. Local experience may indeed offer federal officials some useful models. Since 1997, for instance, California has allowed eligible women and their partners to receive reproductive health care from any of the state's roughly 2,400 Medicaid providers, even if neither qualified for Medicaid. Prior to 1997, even Medicaid recipients were limited to 143 family planning agencies.
Benefits covered under the project include contraception, and tests and treatment for STDs.
The program has been so fruitful that each state dollar is now matched with nine federal dollars. Another success is the Young Men's Clinic, supported by New York City's Columbia University since 1986. Added funding will soon allow the program to extend its benefits to teens in nearby Harlem. In an Indianapolis neighborhood with one of the city's highest concentrations of drugs and violence, young men are drawn to the Brotherhood Project as an alternative to isolation or the lure of gangs. Sponsored by Indiana's Department of Health and the local Planned Parenthood affiliate, the project brings together two dozen boys, ages 10 to 19, three evenings a week for education and mutual support.