Our Impact on Volunteers
Even as they provide high-impact services to families, Project HEALTH volunteers grow as creative, knowledgeable leaders for a more effective healthcare system in this country.
In negotiating the Food Stamps bureaucracy or searching for housing with a family, our volunteers gain insight into the challenges families face in maintaining their health while living in poverty. In collaborating with interdisciplinary clinical teams to meet families’ needs, they learn what it takes to effect real change in this country’s health care system. In reflecting together on the meaning and efficacy of their work, they develop the skills to lead their peers and sustain themselves in the lifelong project of making social change.
Over the multiple years that most volunteers work with Project HEALTH, their experiences profoundly impact their sense of their role in building a healthcare system that works for all Americans. This year, 83% of graduating Project HEALTH volunteers plan to go into employment or graduate study that addresses issues of health and poverty, and 73% of those students state that their work with Project HEALTH influenced their decisions to pursue careers in this field.
As alumna Mia Lozada, now a University of Chicago medical student, observed: “My classmates think you write a prescription, and you’re done. I ask, can the patient read the prescription? Does she have health insurance to fill it? Does she need transportation to the pharmacy? Does she have food at home to take with the prescription?” From whatever their vantage, Project HEALTH’s alumni are powerful advocates for a new vision for healthcare in this country.
