Health Leads

Health Leads, founded in 1996 as part of the Boston Medical Center Pediatrics Department, enables doctors to prescribe food, housing, job training or other resources for their patients. Patients take these prescriptions to Health Leads programmes in the waiting rooms of urban hospitals and health centres, where well-trained undergraduate advocates fill them by connecting patients with the resources that they need to be healthy. Last year, the organization trained and mobilized nearly 1,000 college volunteers serving more than 11,000 low-income patients and their families.