Andy Choi, an undergraduate at GW, said reflection meetings would be an important part of the Washington program because he saw the meetings as crucial for developing the volunteers’ sense of purpose.

Since the Novartis Foundation awarded Project HEALTH a $76,000 grant to establish a site in Washington last November, coordinators from Harvard have hired a full-time site director who researched potential campus and hospital sites for the program. Kunal K. Merchant, ’01, the Washington site director, said the reputation of Project HEALTH has spread along the East Coast based on “word-of-mouth.”

“Before Project HEALTH came to D.C., we had to do a lot of lobbying to convince hospitals in other cities that we had a useful service to provide,” Merchant said. But he said doctors and hospitals in Washington were already aware of the program and were impressed by it.

“They were hungry for our services,” he said.

Choi said the start of the Washington site, which already has 140 GW students interested in participating in the program this fall, indicated the growing influence of the program.

“The impact of these meetings and the legacy of Harvard will be the successful start of a program that becomes its own thing and grows at GW,” he said.