History

One Doctor's Vision

Not every illness has a biological cause. A family forced to choose between food and heat in the winter months cannot be treated with a prescription or a vaccination. Doctors at Boston Medical Center (BMC), New England’s largest safety-net hospital, face this dilemma every day.  Close to 70% of BMC’s patients are poor, making them particularly vulnerable to the environmental and social stressors that impact health.  It is often these unmet basic needs which repeatedly force families into their doctor’s office.

Chief of Pediatrics Dr. Barry Zuckerman was frustrated sending sick children home to apartments with mold and without heat, only to see them return again and again not having responded to medical treatments.  Dr. Zuckerman recognized that a lawyer could help patients navigate the complex legal systems that hold solutions to many social determinants of health—income supports for food insecure families, utility shut-off protection during cold winter months, and mold removal from the home of asthmatic children. Together, a doctor and a lawyer had the best chance of keeping patients healthy.

In 1993, the Medical-Legal Partnership for Children (MLPC) was founded with a single attorney, Joshua Greenberg, to serve patient-families at Boston Medical Center. Over the last fifteen years, the program has expanded to eight lawyers and three paralegals serving Boston Medical Center and six affiliated community health centers.

In January 2009, MLPC separated local and national functions to form two separate programs -- Medical-Legal Partnership | Boston , founding site of the MLP Network, and the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership.  Both programs remain part of Boston Medical Center's nationally recognized Pediatrics Department.

A National Model for Healthcare

In the late 1990s, MLPC began receiving inquiries from legal aid offices and hospitals around the country who were interested in creating medical-legal partnerships in their communities.  In 2001, following an article in The New York Times, inquiries increased and MLPC held its first national conference in Boston to train lawyers and healthcare providers how to adapt the model in their communities.

In 2006, MLPC received significant investment from the W. K. Kellogg and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations to create a National Center to support the expansion, advancement, and integration of the medical-legal partnership model by providing technical assistance to partnership sites, facilitating the MLP Network, and coordinating national research and policy activities related to preventive law, health disparities, and the social determinants of health.

In January 2009, MLPC’s National Center officially became the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership (NCMLP) signaling both an expanded clinical focus to serve all vulnerable populations and a bifurcation of Boston’s local and national offices. As part of this transition, Medical-Legal Partnership | Boston was established and is the founding site of the MLP Network. The bifurcation helps support both the national MLP Network and MLP | Boston’s local activities more effectively. Our new name is also meant to broaden the focus, application and Network to include all vulnerable populations. Our shortened acronym reflects that medical-legal partnership is an intervention that works not only for kids, but in all clinical and disease populations.

What began with a doctor's vision and a lawyer's dedication and passion has developed into a national model for the delivery of healthcare.  Lawyers -- legal aid agencies, law schools and pro bono attorneys -- and front-line health care providers – doctors, nurses and social workers – are now partnered at over 200 hospitals and health centers nationwide, serving children, the elderly, patients with cancer, pregnant women, the formerly incarcerated reentry community and other vulnerable populations.

The National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership is a program of Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center.