An opportunity to serve the New York community and address the social determinants of health:
Health Leads mobilizes undergraduate volunteers, in partnership with providers in urban clinics, to connect low-income patients with the basic resources — such as food, housing, and heating assistance — that they need to be healthy.
Every day in America, doctors prescribe antibiotics to patients who have no food at home or are living in a car.
Of course, medicine alone won’t solve these problems, and many of the patients will return with more serious and expensive illnesses. But, for the most part, doctors don’t have the time or knowledge to address patients’ basic resource needs.
Health Leads solves this problem. With Health Leads, a doctor can “prescribe” food, housing, or other critical resources – just as they would medication. Patients take their prescriptions to the clinic waiting room, where Health Leads’ college volunteers are ready to connect them to these resources.
Health Leads New York has desks in Harlem Hospital and New York Presbyterian Hospital.
Applications for Health Leads are due THIS FRIDAY AT MIDNIGHT, and are attached to this email.
