Project HEALTH
Some charities flourish from the start. Since 1996, more than 1800 families each year have relied on Project HEALTH to connect them with community-based resources critical to their health, safety, and economic survival. Leveraging the volunteer efforts of college students and medical professionals, Project HEALTH assists these families with shelter, health insurance, job training, and child care at a phenomenally low cost of $0.50 per family.
Founded by Harvard undergraduates, Project HEALTH works to ensure that every child grows up free from the burden of poor health. It moves health-related expertise into neighborhoods, for greater accessibility to families. It administers 10 programs for low-income families and children. Hospital-based programs include visits to Boston Medical Center clinics. Neighborhood-based programs include the Asthma Swimming Program, which helps asthmatic children to develop disease management strategies, strengthen their lung capacity by swimming, and to understand the disease.
Project HEALTH also operates Family Help Desk, a resource based in the Boston Medical Center Pediatric Clinic and staffed by undergraduate volunteers. The Help Desk assists 700 families per year — including 1 in 20 of Boston’s low-income children — with a variety of issues from domestic abuse to food assistance.
In 1999, Project HEALTH was selected from 600 applicants nationwide by the Do Something Foundation to receive the Brick Award, which recognizes charities less than 30 years old with “the passion and drive to improve their communities by developing innovative strategies to create sustainable, positive change.” On the basis of its successful track record, HEALTH has already successfully expanded to Harlem and Providence, and plans to bring the Project HEALTH model to Hartford and Chicago. You can hel pthis worthy young organization to come to scale.