Our Impact on Volunteers
Project HEALTH mobilizes a corps of inspired undergraduate volunteers to connect low-income patients and their families with the resources they need to be healthy - and in doing so, creates a pipeline of leaders with conviction, knowledge, experience, and efficacy to create the fundamental changes necessary to ensure positive health outcomes for all Americans.
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. Last year, 90% of graduating Project HEALTH volunteers planned to go into employment or graduate study addressing issues of health or poverty, and 94% of these identified Project HEALTH as a key factor impacting this decision.
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.
