Authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 pediatric providers and 20 parents/guardians who had engaged with medical-legal partnership services at an academic medical center in New Haven, Connecticut. They found that the MLP improved provider knowledge of and ability to address social determinants of health and health-harming legal needs, improved provider-family relationships, and encouraged providers to engage in systemic and institutional advocacy. Findings were published in Academic Pediatrics.

The authors conducted a systematic review to better define the impact that educational programs centered on medical-legal partnerships have on trainees’ knowledge, attitudes and future practice with regards to the social determinants of health. Benefits to trainees were wide in scope but all programs showed improvements in participants’ understanding, comfort, confidence, and/or abilities in identifying and intervening on the social determinants of health in their patients. This article was published in the BMC Medical Education.

From 2016 - 2017, a medical-legal partnership in Washington, D.C. piloted a legislative advocacy training program for preclinical medical students designed to prepare them to meet with Capitol Hill representatives about a health justice issue. The pilot assessed the impact of adding an interprofessional education dimension to the program, which in this case involved engaging law faculty and students to help the medical students understand and navigate the federal legislative process and prepare for their meetings. Results from the pilot suggest that adding law and policy experts to advocacy-focused training programs can improve medical students’ advocacy knowledge and skills and increase their professional identity as advocates. The findings were published in the Journal of Legal Medicine.