Health Leads

Health Leads mobilizes college volunteers to connect patients and their families with the basic resources they need to be healthy.  With Health Leads, doctors can “prescribe” resources such as food, housing and heating assistance – just as they do medication.  Patients take their prescriptions to the clinic waiting room, where volunteers help “fill” them by connecting patients to community services.

This concept was started by Jack Geiger, a primary care doc who integrated the community health center model into the US health care system.  His first project was in the Mississippi Delta and for the first time he started to perscribe fresh fruits and vegetables in addition to a patient's medication.  Local pharmacies at first did not know what to do with the perscriptions, but after a while many began to understand the idea of wholistic (literally) care. 

Want to get involved?  Health Leads is located in 6 major cities on the East Coast and volunteers are asked to serve six hours a week for a year.  These volunteers help families tap into a wide variety of services which will help them to improve the health outcomes for their families.  Check out the video - short and sweet, I promise.  Thanks to Amy for sending it around!