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 Opioid Crisis in America & the Role Medical-Legal Partnership Can Play in Recovery
This issue brief examines how legal services delivered alongside medical and behavioral health services can help support successful recovery from substance use disorders. It highlights case studies of individuals in recovery who were aided by medical-legal partnership services, and looks at how existing recovery-based MLP programs in Ohio, Indiana, and Nevada operate. The brief offers a window into how legal services, integrated into existing recovery efforts, can play a role in alleviating the crisis.
Health Center-Based Medical-Legal Partnerships: Where They Are, How They Work, and How They Are Funded
Health centers represent the fastest growing sector for medical-legal partnership (MLP) adoption across the health care system; the number of health centers operating MLPs in 2016 represents nearly double the number in 2014. Today, 113 health centers operate MLPs, and 38 additional health centers are planning new MLPs. This issue brief describes how and where these partnerships operate and how state primary care associations are supporting these programs. It also discusses how health-center based MLPs are financed, with a spotlight on four states that integrate financing for legal services in Medicaid payment arrangements.
Information Sharing in Medical-Legal Partnerships: Foundational Concepts and Resources
In order to effectively facilitate patient access to the legal services that can ultimately improve health, it is critical that healthcare practitioners and legal service providers be able to share information. Medical-legal partnerships are designed to encourage and enable this communication, but the information privacy legal framework may still present obstacles, both real and perceived, to effective information sharing. This brief discusses numerous opportunities to share information within the boundaries of that legal framework and describes different consent models that are possible.
Screening For Health-Harming Legal Needs
This issue brief examines how 13 hospitals and health centers screen their patients for health-harming legal needs. It describes who gets screened and how, the way screening information is recorded and shared with legal partners, and lessons learned that can help other health care institutions more effectively screen their patients for legal needs and partner with civil legal aid agencies to address those needs.
Applying the Medical-Legal Partnership Approach to Population Health, Pain Points, and Payment Reform
This issue brief examines two examples of payment reform pain points felt by healthcare institutions adapting to new reimbursement models and the treatment of those pain points through collaboration with medical-legal partnerships (MLPs). This is followed by recommendations on how an MLP can become part of those population health management teams that are revolutionizing health care one population at a time, and the advantages of doing so, both for the healthcare institution and for the sustainability of the MLP approach.
Building Resources To Support Civil Legal Aid Access In HRSA-Funded Health Centers
This issue brief describes the ways that a supplemental funding opportunity sparked medical-legal partnerships growth in health centers, resulting in expansions in civil legal aid services provided to health center patients by partnering civil legal aid organizations and law school clinics. It shares the experiences of health centers from Hawai’i to New Hampshire that received expanded services awards from HRSA and used them for legal-related enabling services, and extrapolates lessons for other health centers about the impact of collaborations between health centers and civil legal aid services and how to leverage funding opportunities for fostering medical-legal partnerships.