Vote for Lend4Health – Loans for Healthier Lives

Note: Help Lend4Health Win $10,000! - Vote on IdeaBlob (There's only 24 Hrs. left - Lend4Health is currently in 3^rd place and needs to crack 2^nd to have a chance to win!)

Lend4Health is a new platform that “facilitates community-based, interest-free 'micro-loans' as a creative funding option for individuals seeking optimal health.”

Currently, Lend4Health focuses on loans for the "biomedical" treatment of children and adults with autism spectrum disorders – with the potential of adding other treatments in the future.

Lend4Health is inspired by the peer-to-peer lending site – Kiva.org (a Social Actions partner platform). Rather than donating funds to entrepreneurs in the developing world, Lend4Health enables you to make loans to those in need of healthcare. This person-to-person micro-loan model has worked wonders for Kiva.org – raising over 40 million dollars and funding over 90,000 entrepreneurs!

Essentially, what Kiva.org has done to help alleviate people out of poverty, Lend4Health has the potential to do for helping people pursue better health.

Taking on healthcare with loans is a unique approach that in a world with accessible and free health care wouldn't need to exist – although unfortunately that's not the world we live in. People often need to see a specialist, get surgery, purchase medical supplies, etc – and many don't have health insurance. An accessible community-powered loan would give those in need an alternative to getting care. Still, a loan could be a significant burden to those after they have received care. I've talked with Tori Tuncan, Founder & Director of Lend4Health, about the idea of also giving people the option to donate funds rather than loans. This would create a community of donors and loaners – which might lead to cheaper care as well (as the total loan amount would equal less than the total proposal). I could see other alternatives for alleviating the loan burden as well – such as integrating sponsors and giving contests (like DonorsChoose.org).

You can also check out other discussions surrounding Lend4Health on the Discover Magazine Blog and on ABC News.

Currently, Lend4Health is budget-built on blogging software with posts re-wired to act as proposals. Given these and other constraints (the founder also has a day job!) Lend4Health has raised over $7,000 since its inception about 3 months ago! I think this really speaks to the need for a giving site devoted to promoting health care, which leads me to the title of this post:

Tori has entered Lend4Health into the IdeaBlob Contest, where the proposal w/the most votes wins $10,000! These startup funds could make a huge difference for Lend4Health - so if you want to help push this project forward – please take a moment to vote!

Full Disclosure: Social Actions will soon be submitting a proposal to Lend4Health for strategy development. My passion for Lend4Health (as hopefully seen by this post) is why I want to help them win as well as harness the Social Actions team to help take their site to the next level.