Sarah McGinty
Director of Special Projects
Project HEALTH

Describing Sarah as a utility infielder for Project HEALTH isn’t far from the truth. A young organization that addresses systemic needs, Project HEALTH has seen rapid growth; wearing more than one hat is normal for staffers.  Project HEALTH uses the doctor’s office as a point of intervention to connect urban families with critical resources, such as food, housing and childcare. It taps and mobilizes college students to help families who face “double jeopardy.” “Double jeopardy is the dynamic combination of poverty and poor health. Poor children face two sets of obstacles: First, they are more frequently exposed to risks such as medical illness, family stress, insufficient social support, poor housing conditions and parental depression; and second, when these risks are realized, these children face more serious consequences to their health than counterparts of higher socioeconomic status.”1

Prior to Project HEALTH, Sarah says, there were few models for comprehensive intervention in families’ total health picture. “Medical residents seeing new patients should be asking about the psychosocial issues that could affect the patients’ acute symptoms, like the status of their housing, whether they have enough food, whether there is a family support network. Many doctors were just not asking those questions, because they could do so little to change the non-medical conditions that affect peoples’ health.” Project HEALTH partners with urban hospitals and universities to run practical programs geared toward changing this negative dynamic. To do that, they mobilize college undergraduates to make connections between families and the community and government resources that families need to be healthy.

The idea began in 1996 as a pilot project that involved 10 Harvard students led by Rebecca Onie, then a sophomore, and Dr. Barry Zuckerman, professor of pediatrics and public health at Boston University School of Medicine and chief of pediatrics at Boston Medical Center. Project HEALTH now has offices in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, New York City, Providence and Washington, D.C. Today, it is a national network of thousands of volunteers, physicians and families.

Sarah joined the organization last summer, and her responsibilities begin on the financial side of the house: philanthropic development, business planning (including implementing new financial systems), helping support the board’s activities, and some operations work (making sure things happen as they should).

Success brings growth and growth pushes all kinds of strategic questions onto the table. This is especially true when armies of college students are busy thinking about how to do more, and better. It’s also true when cities, like Boston, want to capitalize on the model and spread it out into neighborhood clinics. For Sarah, the strategic questions bring intellectual excitement. What could be better than working with leaders to figure out which organizational moves or shifts in program are going to strengthen the mission? How does the ability to attract financing affect the direction you take? What kind of fundraising enterprise makes sense? How should we evaluate new ideas that volunteers suggest? What targets, numerical and otherwise, should Project HEALTH set?

Sarah is in her element, but getting here was not a straight shot. After interviewing intensely as a college senior with New York and Boston investment houses, she turned down the offers. Looking for the opportunity for “creativity” in her career, she sought a role in film production management. During her one year working endless hours with the talent agency Creative Artists Agency, she was creative only in learning “how to get absolutely anything done,” she says. For the next year, she was on the staff of Kathleen Kennedy’s production company, the Kennedy/Marshall Company (producers of E.T. and The Bourne Identity). That experience demonstrated decisively that “working in the entertainment world isn’t work as we know it,” according to Sarah. “It’s a battle of attrition rather than a meritocracy. I thought I could probably hang in long enough to succeed, but I didn’t want to.”

From Los Angeles she came back to Cambridge to work on fundraising strategy at Harvard. “The power of philanthropy, for me,” Sarah says, “is bringing together people with resources and people with great ideas to drive progress.” Viewing the machinations of nonprofits, like a university, from the inside was a terrific learning opportunity. It opened up her interest in the organizational issues that nonprofits must consider if they expect to be as effective and accountable as successful businesses.

In that context, the chance to get on-the-ground experience helping direct a thriving nonprofit focused on a crucial mission was a thrill. Now that she’s found the right direction, the next step seems clear to Sarah. She wants business school training; she’s looking particularly for a strong foundation in the rigorous analytics that she believes will be invaluable in running a nonprofit.

Now involved in yet another interview circuit, she commented on her interview at the University of Chicago Business School: “It was the first conversation at a business school that reminded me of Milton. They want you to challenge the school, to ask questions, to seek out what you want to learn and to know. The teachers at Milton ask the same of you; they push you to think in new ways, to ask questions, to self-reflect, to develop friendships with people who are diverse, talented, and offer so many different perspectives. In many ways, Milton gave me all the tools I need to be successful.”

CDE

1 The Web site www.projecthealth.org was a source for some information in this profile.

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