Resources
We publish research, tools, and lessons learned to help healthcare and legal organizations build and operate medical-legal partnerships and to help funders and policymakers advance medical-legal partnership activities. You can search those resources in the library below.
The library also links to journal articles, authored both by National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership staff and MLP practitioners and researchers from the field, that highlight ways medical-legal partnerships have improved patient health and well-being, the healthcare workforce, and healthcare delivery. A list of these articles with summaries are also available on the Peer-Reviewed Research page.
The Roots and Branches of the Medical-Legal Partnership Approach to Health: From Collegiality to Civil Rights to Health Equity
This article traces the roots of the medical-legal partnership (MLP) approach to health as a way of promoting the use of law to remedy societal and institutional pathologies that lead to individual and population illness and to health inequalities.
Interprofessional Medical–Legal Education of Medical Students: Assessing the Benefits for Addressing Social Determinants of Health
In 2011, the authors implemented a four-session didactic interprofessional curriculum on medical–legal practice for third-year medical students at Morehouse School of Medicine. From 2011–2014, medical students participated in pre- and post-intervention surveys designed to determine their awareness of SDOH’s impact on health as well as their attitudes toward screening for SD0H issues and incorporating resources, including a legal resource, to address them. Post-intervention survey results indicated that students self-reported an increased likelihood to screen patients for SDOH issues and an increased likelihood to refer patients to a legal resource.
Bridging Health Disparity Gaps through the Use of Medical Legal Partnerships in Patient Care: A Systematic Review
This article is a review of observational studies, published from January 1993 -January 2016, to investigate the capacity of medical-legal partnerships to address legal and health disparities. The authors identified 13 articles for qualitative analysis from an initial pool of 355 records, four of which directly addressed the impact of MLP intervention on patient wellbeing and/or patient utilization of health care services.
The Medical–Legal Partnership Approach to Teaching Social Determinants of Health and Structural Competency in Residency Programs
Medical-legal partnership training helps residents develop structural competency and build the skills necessary to address barriers to health at the patient, institutional, and population levels. Through a case study, this Perspective in Academic Medicine explores how residents can address health-harming legal needs working in partnership with interprofessional health care teams that include lawyers, and illustrates how such MLP experiences can relate to competency-based Milestones that are applicable to training residents in all specialties.
‘Extra Oomph:’ Addressing Housing Disparities Through Medical-Legal Partnership Interventions
Drawn from in-depth interviews with 72 patients, this study investigated the outcomes of medical-legal partnership (MLP) interventions and compared results to similarly disadvantaged participants with no access to MLP services. Results indicate that participants in the MLP group were more likely to achieve adequate, affordable, and stable housing than those in the comparison group. Study findings suggest that providing access to legal services in the healthcare setting can effectively address widespread health disparities rooted in problematic housing.
Tax-Exempt Hospitals and Community Health Under the Affordable Care Act: Identifying and Addressing Unmet Legal Needs as Social Determinants of Health
This article reviews recently promulgated Internal Revenue Service regulations for nonprofit hospitals seeking tax exemption and a new estimate of national hospital community benefit spending, and analyzes how they point to the value of hospitals working with community partners to address the social determinants of health. It then explains how unmet legal needs function as health determinants, and suggests how hospitals’ participation in medical-legal partnerships can address those needs.