Ed Note: This is a cross post from the blog of healthcare.gov. You can find the original post here.

As a group, we men are not known for doing a very good job of taking care of our own health.

National Men’s Health Week, from June 10 through Father’s Day on June 16, is a good time for us to start taking responsibility and doing what’s needed to stay healthy and active. That means eating right, taking the time to exercise, and—yes—talking to our doctors about what checkups we need.

Many health problems are preventable or more easily treated if we’re proactive about our health. The good news is the Affordable Care Actensures that most health insurance plans cover recommended preventive services at no out-of-pocket cost.

Some of these services that are particularly important to men ages 40 to 64 include blood pressure and cholesterol checks, flu shots and tobacco cessation services.

Make sure your fathers, grandfathers, friends and uncles on Medicare know that they are eligible for these and other preventive services such as a yearly wellness visit, with no co-pays or deductibles. 

Today, there are many young immigrants who were brought here by parents seeking a better life. These promising young people grew up here and call this country home. They deserve an opportunity and so do their parents. 

One year ago Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security took action to lift the shadow of deportation for eligible young people – who we often call the “DREAMers” – so they can fully contribute to our economy and our society. This process is known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

DACA is just one of the many steps the Department of Homeland Security has taken to make our immigration enforcement policies smarter and more effective at focusing on our priorities. These steps all ensure that our immigration enforcement can focus on high-priority individuals instead of clogging the system with low priority cases.

Those who have been approved for deferred action include earnest, productive young people who are ready to give back to the only country they have ever known and in the fullest possible sense. They are American in every way but on paper. As the President has said many times, it makes no sense to remove productive young people to countries where they may not have lived or even speak the language.

While DACA is an important step forward, the only way to have a lasting solution is for Congress to pass commonsense immigration reform that includes a pathway to earned citizenship. We welcome the Senate’s current debate on a commonsense immigration reform bill that has bipartisan support.

This legislation isn’t just about policy – it’s about people. The President and Vice President recently met with DREAMers as well as with the siblings and spouses of undocumented immigrants, to hear directly from those affected daily by our nation’s broken immigration system.

One person in that meeting was Kevin Lee, a DACA recipient who currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Kevin’s parents emigrated from South Korea to California in 1999 when he was 9 years old. Kevin graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles and has a B.A. in History and a minor in Asian Humanities. Understanding the struggles of recent immigrants, Kevin recently took his LSATs with the hopes obtaining a law degree in order to serve and advocate on behalf of his community. 

I am also a graduate of UCLA. I am certain that Kevin and I walked the same streets on campus, studied in the same libraries, and frequented the same coffee shops on late night studying breaks during finals. When I see Kevin’s story captured here, I cannot help but imagine what his life would be like if he did not have to worry every day about his undocumented status. Imagine how much more he will be able to achieve when commonsense immigration reform is enacted.

Kevin is not alone. He stands with others who only want the chance to earn their way into the American story. We hope that the Congress will answer his call.

Felicia Escobar is Senior Policy Director for Immigration in the White House Domestic Policy Council

A fast, reliable Internet connection is as essential to the modern economy as electricity or phone service, and over the last four years, the country has made tremendous progress investing in and delivering high-speed broadband to an unprecedented number of Americans. Today we are releasing a new White House report entitled Four Years of Broadband Growth that makes that case even clearer.

The results speak for themselves: since 2009, average broadband speeds have doubled, and the percentage of Americans with access to high-speed wireless broadband has more than quadrupled (from under 20% to over 80%). We were the first nation to deploy next-generation 4G/LTE wireless broadband on such a scale, which has in turn helped fuel the demand for the 500 million Internet-connected devices we now own.

This technology is doing more than just enriching lives; it is creating jobs. With the right incentives in place over the last four years, companies have invested over $250 billion in broadband infrastructure. The “App economy” that has sprung up in that same time is estimated to have created 500,000 jobs alone. And America is again leading the world in these innovations; six years ago, only 5 percent of the world’s phones ran an operating system that was Made in America – today, over eighty percent do.

But there is much more to be done to make sure we fully unleash the potential of this revolution in the way we communicate, learn, and work.

As the President said last week in Mooresville, NC, “in an age when the world’s information is a just click away, it demands that we bring our schools and libraries into the 21st century.” We have an obligation to wire our schools with better Internet than our coffee houses; our kids, and our economy, deserve better. That is why President Obama unveiled the ConnectED initiative to connect 99 percent of America’s students to high-speed broadband within five years.

We also have to bring more efficiency to our increasingly crowded airwaves. The number of wireless devices is exploding, and that means increasing demands on the spectrum upon which they all rely. The federal government helps manage that resource, and we know we can do a better job of unleashing innovation by ensuring more of it is shared, unlicensed for innovations like Wi-Fi, and better used by our departments and agencies. So today we are also announcing a Presidential Memorandum outlining a number of new spectrum policies — accompanied by $100 million in spending on federal research on spectrum.

President Obama is committed to seizing these historic opportunities to deliver faster, more reliable, and more affordable Internet – and with it, new opportunity – to all Americans. That is the context for our announcements this month, and in the months and years to come.

Last week, the President issued a new challenge for our nation – one that families, businesses, school districts and the federal government can rally around together – to connect virtually every student with access to cutting-edge technology as part of a competitive, 21st century education.  The new ConnectED initiative he announced was a bold, transformative vision for America’s schools, ensuring that they have access to high-speed broadband and wireless internet to expand connectivity to more schools and libraries over the next 5 years. 

ConnectED will bring high-speed Internet within reach for tens of millions of America’s kids – and with it, it empowers more teachers and schools to harness the power of digital learning. As President Obama said in Mooresville, NC last week, “these are the tools that our children deserve.”  Connecting schools “will better prepare our children for the jobs and challenges of the future and it will provide them a surer path into the middle class.  And, as a consequence, it will mean a stronger, more secure economy for all of us. “

Since then, idea of equipping our schools with the connectivity they need has received wide support – including from members of the bipartisan Leading Education by Advancing Digital (LEAD) Commission, which Education Secretary Arne Duncan and former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski called upon to examine how we can jumpstart technology use in America’s schools. 

What was the original intent behind the Constitution and other documents that helped shape the nation? What did the Founders of our country have to say? Those questions persist in the political debates and discussions to this day, and fortunately, we have a tremendous archive left behind by those statesmen who built the government over 200 years ago.

For the past 50 years, teams of editors have been copying documents from historical collections scattered around the world that serve as a record of the Founding Era. They have transcribed hundreds of thousands of documents—letters, diaries, ledgers, and the first drafts of history—and have researched and provided annotation and context to deepen our understanding of these documents.

These papers have been assembled in 242 documentary editions covering the works of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, as well as hundreds of people who corresponded with them. Now for the first time ever, these documents—along with thousands of others that will appear in additional print volumes—will be available to the public.

The Founders Online is a new website at the National Archives that will allow people to search this archive of the Founding Era, and read just what the Founders wrote and discussed during the first draft of the American democracy. Students and researchers, citizens and scholars can turn to Founders Online to track and debate the meaning of documents such as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They can examine transcriptions of the originals and read the wit and wisdom of the Founders’ own debates.

Every year since taking office, President Obama has invited members and allies of the LGBT community to celebrate Pride Month at the White House. Tomorrow, the President will host this event for the fifth time, to bring together national leaders, elected officials, faith leaders, members of the military and veterans community, and local advocates and organizers to reflect upon the progress we’ve made and recommit to the work that lies ahead.

This year, the White House invited nine Americans from across the country to attend the White House LGBT Pride Month Reception on Thursday, June 13.  All of them are members or allies of the LGBT community who wrote letters to the President to express their thanks and to share their hopes, ambitions, and concerns for the future. 

Check out a video of White House staff inviting the letter writers to the White House Pride reception, and then watch the President’s remarks live at the reception on Thursday, June 13, starting around 5:00 PM EDT.

The United States is a nation of immigrants. And the White House, like nearly every other American office, is full of staffers whose stories started in countries all over the world.

We asked some of them to share their own immigration stories, and explain why they think it’s so important to fix our broken immigration system once and for all. Check it out, then share your own immigration story here.

In April, President Obama issued a challenge to local elected officials and business and community leaders: work together to connect young people with summer and year-round job opportunities.

Through its Youth Jobs+ initiative, the Administration is working to both increase employment opportunities for low-income or disconnected youth and decrease juvenile violence. This initiative builds off the highly successful 2012 Summer Jobs+ program. To help local communities that are developing and enhancing programs that support of these goals, the Administration is offering online resources, technical assistance, and local events across the country that highlight the value and importance of providing pathways to employment for young people. The Administration also is working with several national organizations to disseminate these resources, including the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which issued its own summer youth jobs challenge this year.

President Barack Obama participates in a bilateral meeting with President Ollanta Humala of Peru in the Oval Office, June 11, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Today, President Obama held a bilateral meeting with President Ollanta Humala of Peru.

“Peru is one of our strongest and most reliable partners in the hemisphere, President Obama said.  “And we spent most of our discussion focused on how we can further deepen this important bilateral relationship.” 

I want to congratulate President Humala on being able to sustain strong growth rates in Peru, and his focus on broad-based economic growth that includes all people.  As a consequence, Peru has been able to see not only increased growth but also reduced poverty and steps to reduce inequality. 

For both the United States and Peru, growth is also dependent on our continued expansion in the global marketplace, and that’s why I'm very glad that Peru and the United States are working so closely together in finalizing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which offers the possibility of opening up markets throughout the Asia Pacific region with high standards and protections for labor and the environment. 

The two leaders also discussed additional areas of cooperation, including deepening education exchange programs, connecting small and medium-sized businesses to markets throughout the hemisphere, and combatting transnational drug networks.