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Check out these stats:

• African American and Latino children are 3.4 times more likely than white children to live in poverty.
• In California, African American mothers are two times more likely than white mothers to have less than a high school education, while Latino mothers are more than ten times more likely than white mothers to have less than a high school education.
• Nationally, the risk of contracting HIV or AIDS is 6.9 times higher for African American male adults and adolescents than for whites. Latinos are 3.1 times more likely than whites to have HIV or AIDS.
• Overall, 1 in 3 African American men, 1 in 6 Latino men, and 1 in 17 white men are expected to go to prison during their lifetime.
• Homicide is the sixth-leading cause of death among African American men and the seventh-leading cause of death among Latino men in California. Young African American men (15-24 years) have a homicide death rate at least 16 times greater than that of young white men, and young Latino men have a homicide death rate 5 times greater than that of young white men.
• African American Californians over age 25 are nearly twice as likely to be without a high school diploma as whites, while Latinos in California are almost seven times as likely to be without a high school degree.

Those are just some of the statistics from a report that the RAND Corporation published in February called “Reparable Harm: Assessing and Addressing Disparities Faced by Boys and Men of Color in California.”

When I read the report, as heartbreaking as it is, I thought that it sounded like information I'd already heard.

After all, in 2006, the Dellums Commission examined policies that negatively impact young men of color and recommended policy solutions.

So, why put together another report telling us a bunch of gloomy stats that we already know?

The answer, says lead author Lois Davis, lies in the way that we approach solutions to the problems.

“If you look at a lot of the ways our programs are structured,” says the Senior Policy Researcher, “they tend to think about the issues, for example, from a kind of a one-issue-at-a-time perspective.”

Davis adds that what's really needed, “is thinking about it more comprehensively for a locality, and not just thinking about do we need more after-care programs, do we need more mentoring programs, but really seeing that this constellation of factors that influence the trajectories that children face in these different communities really come together and needs a comprehensive strategy.”

But what do comprehensive strategies look like? And how will the “Reparable Harm” report be used?

Check back Wednesday and Thursday to learn what a gang interventionist, an education scholar dedicated to Latino dropout prevention and the California Endowment told me about comprehensive solutions.

Coming up Wednesday: California's Boys and Men of Color Part II: “Whatever It Takes”

Coming up Thursday: California's Boys and Men of Color Part III: The Lens of the Community