Delivering sexual and reproductive health services for men: Challenges, responses, and lessons learned

Reproductive and sexual health (RSH) care services have traditionally served women, and with the spread of HIV/AIDS, non-heterosexual men. While there have recently been calls for a change, heterosexual men remain largely invisible. Healthy People 2010 identifies increased male involvement in RSH programs as one of its public health goals. The time is ripe for developing clinical and community-based RSH services for heterosexual men to reach this underserved population.

We have been running men's programs for two decades organized around the Young Men's Clinic, a RSH clinic for low-income Latino and African-American young men (ages 12-35) in New York City, and through school and community-based RSH programs for boys and men from northern Manhattan and the Bronx. In this paper, we present our male program model and evidence from evaluations of our services. We then focus on challenges we have encountered and lessons we have learned about providing clinic- and community-based RSH services to heterosexual men in NYC that are culturally, and gender-friendly. We particularly focus on four areas of interest: (1) why effective and strategic social marketing is a core component of men's RSH services, (2) creative mechanisms for embedding men's RSH education/messages in community settings, (3) how programs can adapt to the dearth of appropriate men's RSH health education materials currently available, especially for populations with low health literacy skills, and (4) how men's programs can challenge young men to engage in services and behaviors that may not be consistent with prevailing gender norms.