• Our Model
  • Family Help Desk
  • STRIVE
• Our Locations
• Our Impact
  • On Families
  • On Clinics
  • On Volunteers
  • Press & Recognition
• Our Team
  • Our Volunteers
  • Our Staff
  • Our Institutional Partners
  • Our Board
  • Our Alumni
  • Our Supporters
• Get Involved!
  • Volunteer
  • Donate
  • Jobs at PH
  • Contact Us

STRIVE

What is STRIVE?

Project HEALTH’s STRIVE program is an afterschool intervention that provides low-income teens with sickle cell disease with the mentoring, peer support, academic assistance, and disease management education they need to manage their condition effectively and realize their full potential. It is the only program of its kind in the country.

Adolescents with sickle cell disease (SCD) – an incurable genetic blood disorder predominantly affecting African Americans and Latinos – are among this country’s most at-risk youth. Prolonged hospital stays cause these teens to miss school frequently and disrupt their social networks, compromising their academic achievement and causing social isolation that contributes to low self-esteem. Each customary challenge of adolescence – academic and social pressure, sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, and drug/alcohol use – is amplified by both their poverty and their illness. Due to these challenges, low-income teens with SCD often report feeling hopeless about their futures.

STRIVE works with participants to lift the barriers of poverty and chronic illness through:

• Tutoring and college preparation to minimize the effect of missed school days on educational attainment;
• Peer support and one-on-one mentoring to build self-confidence and reduce the social isolation;
• Skills and knowledge about how to care for their health and facilitate the transition to adult care; and
• Opportunity to reduce stigma by educating their classmates and school officials about their disease.

Why is it important?

As one STRIVE participant, now in her junior year in college, said: “STRIVE helped me believe that I could conquer any challenges I faced. I never thought that I would graduate high school and go to college, or have the courage to stand up and talk about my disease. STRIVE allowed me to see the strength in myself, and it made me see that I was able to accomplish anything – from graduating high school, which was beyond my imagination at one time, to my dream of opening up my own clinic in Haiti, where I am from.”

Who is the STRIVE team?

STRIVE’s team of undergraduate volunteers run weekly group sessions for the teens as well as meeting with each participant individually each week. Volunteers work closely with physicians and other members of the clinical team, as well as with participants’ families, to ensure that the program is responsive to the specific academic, social, and medical needs of each teen.