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Medical-Legal Partnership: Collaborating with Lawyers to Identify and Address Health Disparities

  • Innovations in Education
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Abstract

Introduction

Medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) bring together medical professionals and lawyers to address social causes of health disparities, including access to adequate food, housing and income.

Setting

Eighty-one MLPs offer legal services for patients whose basic needs are not being met.

Program Description

Besides providing legal help to patients and working on policy advocacy, MLPs educate residents (29 residency programs), health care providers (160 clinics and hospitals) and medical students (25 medical schools) about how social conditions affect health and screening for unmet basic needs, and how these needs can often be impacted by enforcing federal and state laws. These curricula include medical school courses, noon conferences, advocacy electives and CME courses.

Program Evaluation

Four example programs are described in this paper. Established MLPs have changed knowledge (MLP | Boston—97% reported screening for two unmet needs), attitudes (Stanford reported reduced concern about making patients “nervous” with legal questions from 38% to 21%) and behavior (NY LegalHealth reported increasing resident referrals from 15% to 54%) after trainings. One developing MLP found doctors experienced difficulty addressing social issues (NJ LAMP—67% of residents felt uncomfortable).

Discussion

MLPs train residents, students and other health care providers to tackle socially caused health disparities.

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Acknowledgments

Megan Sandel and Pamela Tames would like to acknowledge funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies. Funding for the creation of LegalHealth’s curriculum was from the Jacob and Varleria Langeloth Foundation. Funding for the LAMP program is from the Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey, Robert Wood Tohusan Foundation and the Merck Foundation. FAP is supported by Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, Bernard A. Newcomb Foundation, The California Endowment, First Five San Mateo County, Philanthropic Ventures Foundation, Equal Justice Works, United Health Foundation and the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors have indicated they have no financial relationships relevant to this article to disclose.

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Correspondence to Megan Sandel MD, MPH.

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Cohen, E., Fullerton, D.F., Retkin, R. et al. Medical-Legal Partnership: Collaborating with Lawyers to Identify and Address Health Disparities. J GEN INTERN MED 25 (Suppl 2), 136–139 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-009-1239-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-009-1239-7

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