Applying the Healing Touch
Project HEALTH Seeks to Bridge the Shortfalls in the Health Care System, Helping DC Families and Children Overcome Illnesses
Four GW students and one coordinator sit in a cramped room once a week on the fourth floor of the Marvin Center, expressing hope and concern for DC families. These four students and one employee of Children’s Hospital lead Project HEALTH DC in helping children with their asthma and helping families seek resources.
In essence, these five people and 25 other GW students are reaching out to the community as ambassadors of health and human services.
Project HEALTH DC offers two distinct services: a children’s asthma swimming program and a family help desk. Senior Amy Tilara, sophomore Vivek Jayadeva, and six others head the swim program at the Anthony Bowen YMCA in Columbia Heights. For Tilara and Jayadeva, bridging the shortfalls of the DC health system is one reason they have devoted their lives to this project since the summer.
“There are so many problems and the government really isn’t helping much with it, especially money-wise,”
Jayadeva says. “My perspective has changed from being passionate about housing and social issues to working with little kids and their asthma problems, which seems to be often overlooked.”
Asthma is one of the leading causes of emergency room visits, hospital admissions, and school absenteeism among children, although it is the most preventable cause of hospitalization.
“Our main objectives are that they understand their asthma, take their medication, and go home and teach their parents,”
says Tilara, who plans on attending medical school after she graduates from GW.
Funded in part by the Novartis Foundation and with organizational help from America’s Promise, Project HEALTH DC set up shop in the fall after a series of meetings with area hospitals and universities. Kunal Merchant, site director for the project, says GW was chosen for many reasons, including enthusiasm and the need for medical service opportunities.
“The Office of Community Service felt there was a gap that needed to be filled at George Washington in terms of service opportunities in healthcare,”
Merchant says. “There wasn’t an opportunity for students who are trying to combine a community service interest with an interest in healthcare, medicine, public health, even law and advocacy.”
Merchant says the organization needs lawyers and faculty members who would be willing to offer guidance to the family help desk, which last semester provided advocacy and case management services to more than 60 families on issues ranging from food, cash assistance, child care, and job training. However, Merchant says the students can only do so much.
“There are issues we can’t do a whole lot with,”
he says. “Housing and immigration, for example, when clients who are eligible for benefits but then were denied erroneously, come to us for help. These are the types of cases where legal action needs to be taken and that is beyond the scope of what we are able to do.”
Juniors Priya Varma and Andrew Choi lead the corps of volunteers at the family help desk. Fifteen volunteers staff the desk located at Children’s Hospital for two shifts a day.
“A lot of the families come in feeling very hopeless about not being able to take charge of whatever circumstances they are in,”
Choi says. “I hope that by coming to us and making some phone calls, they can get the full benefits they are entitled to or change their housing conditions so that the next time some issue comes up, they realize they can do something and raise hell with whoever they need to raise hell with.”
A concept the family help desk and the asthma swimming program grapple with is the so-called “double jeopardy,”
which Merchant describes as a vicious cycle of being in an impoverished state.
“Your socioeconomic status puts you at risk,”
Merchant says. “Let’s say you get asthma because you live in a horribly polluted apartment. By virtue of not having much money, by virtue of your parents not having access to resources, your condition is going to be that much worse because you’re not going to be able to go to the hospital, especially when you’re a kid. So you get hit twice.”
Choi says he’s been surprised at how many different facets of life are interconnected.
“It’s been kind of a shocking experience to see how housing relates to your health, which relates to how well children are doing in school,”
Choi says.
More than 300 volunteers across the East Coast assist in these health and housing matters. Project HEALTH assists children and families in Boston, New York, and Providence. Though DC’s version only hosts two programs, the leaders see room for growth and a demand from an ever-needy city and its people.
“We are an incubator for social entrepreneurship,”
Merchant says. “Realistically, we’re never going to have the kind of organization where we could run 20 swim programs across the city, even though there is probably demand for that. We are small with nine or 10 kids in an asthma swim program at a time, but what we’re doing once we hone it and define it can be something that could be in every city.”
Jayadeva hopes his assistance and the participation makes an impact for these children and their families. “I hope that some day, my involvement with them is a little thing in their life that in the future changes them in making decisions, especially physically, so they can play with their friends, not miss school, and do normal things.”
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