News

Article calls for increased funds to support the treatment of social issues that affect health.

Wake Forest University’s Elder Law Clinic and Internal Medicine Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine Section have together joined the MLP Network, a national network of partnership sites that are dedicated to improving the health and well-being of vulnerable populations, including the elderly.

A local doctor and attorney have teamed up to launch an initiative aimed at solving problems that might not be medical in nature but still can sabotage people’s health. Called a medical-legal partnership, the concept is gaining popularity nationwide. The premise is that health problems sometimes can’t be resolved through medical treatment alone. For example, a child with asthma might take medication as prescribed but still have breathing problems because of mold in the family’s apartment. Or a cancer patient might struggle with scheduling needed treatment because her employer is hassling her about time away from the job.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has introduced bills that would allocate $10 million to test the value of medical-legal partnerships.

National medical director Megan Sandel discusses the health risks of utilities shut-off for vulnerable populations.

Laurence Tribe, Senior Counselor for Access to Justice at the U.S. Department of Justice, highlights the MLP for Health Act during a keynote speech at the 2010 ABA Pro Bono Publico Awards Assembly Luncheon.

New article on the MLP for Health Act in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

Speaking to attendees at the Legislative and Governmental Advocacy Update session, ABA President-Elect Stephen Zack outlined a number of issues on which the ABA Governmental Affairs Office has been active. A portion of the program included a description of how medical-legal partnerships work in practice.

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers is looking to build on a trend of linking medical providers with attorneys as a way to help patients through the health care process, avoid preventable medical conditions and reduce health care costs. Senate health committee Chair Tom Harkin (D-IA) along with other senators last week introduced legislation that would set aside $10 million for a federal demonstration and evaluation program to bring attorneys into health care settings and integrate preventive law and medicine, and provide legal assistance to providers and patients.

On Tuesday, July 20, 2010, the Arizona Daily Sun ran an AP story titled, "'Contextual Errors' Common in Medical Care," addressing medical providers' inattention to social or environmental stressors that impact patient health. Providers quoted in this article acknowledged that patients' living conditions -- quality of housing, availability of food and family safety, for example -- are often bypassed during medical diagnosis. As the article emphasized, social problems can lead to adverse health consequences. Because some problems require legal solutions, legal advocacy may be the missing component in a holistic health care model.

A new University of Illinois at Chicago study documents the importance of taking a good social history for patient care.

A new act introduced by Senator Kit Bond and his colleagues from Iowa and Indiana will try to promote legal assistance that could lead to health care savings.

The National Center is pleased to announce that the annual MLP Summit will be held March 24-25, 2011, in Baltimore, MD. Building on the momentum and success of last year’s Capitol Hill Day, we are returning to the greater DC area so that we can once again use the Summit as a backdrop to engage policy makers and national leaders in health, law and public health about the positive impact of MLP. We have tentatively scheduled a Capitol Hill Day for March 23rd.

Maria Castilleja’s heart sunk, she says, when housing authorities threatened to oust her out from her apartment because she forgot to report a $5 increment in food stamp benefits.

n May a group of attorneys from Baker & Daniels spent the afternoon at Wishard Memorial Hospital in Indianapolis. They toured the infusion clinic where patients receive chemotherapy, met with a social worker, and received tuberculosis skin tests, a prerequisite for working with patients. The attorneys are volunteers with EMBRACE, a program that provides holistic services to female cancer patients. The lawyers, working out of the hospital's clinic, help patients draw up guardianship and estate-planning documents.

Read about medical-legal partnerships in the news in communities across the U.S.

A spring 2010 graduate of the University of Kansas School of Law has been selected as the newest fellow to the school’s Family Health Care Legal Services Clinic. Eunice Lee-Ahn will serve in that capacity for 11 months through a postgraduate fellowship program established with a three-year grant from the Sunflower Foundation of Topeka. The program, entering its second year, enables the law school to expand and enhance the medical-legal partnership model in Kansas.

Attorney Matthew Steele discusses how Medical-Legal Partnership | Somerville and MLPs across the country are improving healthcare and the lives of vulnerable patients.

Anika Porter credits the medical-legal partnership of the Child Health Advocacy Project (CHAP) for turning her family's life around. Two years ago, her teenage son, Dannell, was an entirely different person - failing classes, starting fights at school, using drugs and breaking the law. All of Anika's time and energy was devoted to keeping Dannell out of trouble and off the streets.

Unmet legal or environmental needs of patients on the University Medical Center of El Paso and Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center campus can be addressed before they reach crisis proportions through the Medical-Legal Partnerships for El Paso, a collaborative project of Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, Inc. (TRLA), UMC Pediatrics Dept. and TTUHSC Pediatrics Dept. The offices of Medical-Legal Partnerships for El Paso are located on the second floor of the UMC Annex on Alberta St. They are just one of three medical-legal partnerships in the state of Texas; all projects of TRLA.