What Is MLP?

The Medical-Legal Partnership Model:

Medical-legal partnership aims to improve the health and well-being of vulnerable individuals, children and families by integrating legal assistance into the medical setting. Medical-legal partnerships seek to:

• address the negative impact of social determinants on health and
• eliminate barriers to healthcare

in order to help people meet their basic needs and stay healthy.

View the Cleveland Community Advocacy Program's Robert Wood Johnson grantee profile video.

Medical-legal partnership has three core activities:

• Training and education for front-line healthcare providers and staff;
• Direct legal assistance to patient-clients, and
• Joint systemic advocacy by the medical and legal partners.

An absolutely critical ingredient for a successful partnership are committed, effective medical champions who care about vulnerable populations in the community.  Read sample medical champion job descriptions

Partnerships are usually comprised of a set of 2-5 community stakeholders.  Legal partner organizations include: legal aid, bar associations, private attorneys and law firms, and law schools.   Medical partner organizations include academic hospitals and health centers, federally qualified health centers, medical schools and medical associations and societies.

Core Components of a Medical-Legal Partnership:

Regular, integrated training and education for front-line healthcare providers

• Using advocacy training curriculum to create a “culture of advocacy” that promotes adoption of regular screening, identification, triage and referral for social and legal issues affecting health. Training targets medical students, residents, physicians, social workers, nurses, clinical assistants, and others
• Exposure to different strategies of advocacy for patient-clients
• Explanation of relevant legal topics at a level that will result in appropriate screening and referral
• Emphasis on resident training and case consultation for front-line healthcare providers
  

Direct Service

• Lawyer(s) participating as part of the medical team (primary care, subspecialty care, inpatient settings)
• Medical team screens for and identifies social determinants and legal problems that adversely affect family health and well-being
• System of varying intensity of advice, consultations or referrals provided by lawyer or legal team
• Robust social work infrastructure especially for families with complex psychosocial situations requiring intensive case management support, e.g. victims of domestic violence
• Feedback from lawyer to doctor about case resolution

Systemic Advocacy

• Unique, combined voice of medical and legal partners and the compelling clinical experiences of the medical partner making the health case for increased access to resources to meet basic needs for low-income families at the federal, state and local level
• Internal and external evaluation linking legal interventions and health-related outcomes
• Health Impact Assessment developing strategy to evaluate the health impacts of public policies outside of the health domain
• Medical-Legal Partnership Network -- information and strategy-sharing

The National Center is committed to pursuing a range of strategies – from technical assistance to academic research – to support emerging and active medical-legal partnerships in achieving success in the implementation and sustainability of medical-legal partnership activities.