Project HEALTH, a national organization that mobilizes college students to improve the health of low-income patients, has received a $2-million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Funding, which starts June 2009, will provide critical support to build Project HEALTH's organizational capacity and enable its growth to expand the capacity of clinics to meet the resource needs of patients and become a national service model.

The organization was also recently highlighted by First Lady Michelle Obama during her keynote address at the TIME Magazine 100 Most Influential People gala in New York City on May 5, 2009. During this gathering of the world’s top thought leaders, Obama spoke about the power of social innovation in tackling complex social problems and referred to Project HEALTH as an example of "the kind of social innovation and entrepreneurship we should be encouraging all across this country." Obama stated: "Rebecca Onie is a social entrepreneur who founded Project HEALTH to help break the link between poverty and poor health."

Rebecca Onie, J.D., co-founder and CEO of Project HEALTH, cited the first lady's public support and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's grant to Project HEALTH as instrumental in promoting innovation in health care. According to Onie, "The Foundation's investment will enable Project HEALTH to grow our simple, effective model for expanding the scope of clinical care and, in doing so, inspire a generation of young people to tackle the most pressing health issues in their communities.

Project HEALTH mobilizes college students to provide assistance at urban hospitals and health centers. These students help connect low-income patients and their families to critical community resources, such as housing vouchers, supplemental nutrition assistance and educational support.

"Project HEALTH and its Family Help Desk model fit squarely with our mission to improve the health and health care of all Americans," says Nancy Barrand, special adviser for program development at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. As Project HEALTH works to systematically improve health care for low-income patients by using the clinic as a gateway to connect them to the resources they need to be healthy, it is also creates future health care leaders who understand that where you live, work and play has a powerful impact on one's health.

About Project HEALTH

Founded in the Boston Medical Center Pediatrics Department in 1996, Project HEALTH envisions a health care system in which patients’ unmet resource needs are routinely and systematically addressed as a standard element of patient care.

In clinics where Project HEALTH's Family Help Desk programs operate, physicians can prescribe food, housing, job training, health insurance or other resources for their patients as routinely as they do medication. Located in the waiting room and staffed by college volunteers, these Family Help Desks fill the prescriptions by connecting patients with key resources.

The Family Help Desk model expands the urban clinics' capacity to address their patients' needs, while building a pipeline of next-generation leaders—health care providers, policy-makers, and social entrepreneurs—with a foundational understanding of the social determinants of health. Currently, Project HEALTH operates 16 Family Help Desks in hospitals and health centers in Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, New York City, Providence, R.I. and Washington, D.C.