GROWTH

In 1999, six Yale undergraduates began teaching health workshops in New Haven public high schools in order to fill the gap left by an underfunded, understaffed district health program. Today, over one hundred Yale volunteers teach (and often serve as the primary source of) health education in twelve New Haven public high schools. In 2003, the founding members of the New Haven group established Peer Health Exchange, Inc. (PHE) in order to replicate this successful program in other communities with unmet health education needs.

Since 2004, approximately 350 trained PHE volunteers from Barnard, Boston University, Columbia, Harvard, and NYU have taught PHE's health curriculum to over 3,000 low-income 9th grade students in New York City and Boston. In the 2007-2008 academic year we will increase the number of students we reach by growing in New York City, Boston, and Chicago, our newest site.

In July 2007, we launched a five-year growth plan to expand our impact in our existing sites and to new sites across the country.