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.
Sample MLP Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) From a Los Angeles VA Medical Center
Before delivering medical-legal partnership services, health care and legal team members discuss their goals for the program, the responsibilities of each partner, and how they will measure success. When health care organizations choose to contract legal services from a community-based legal services organization (rather than hire lawyers directly to their staff), the decisions partners make should be documented in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). This resource is a sample MLP MOU from Inner City Law Center and the Homeless Patient Aligned Care Team of the Department of Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System outlining their medical-legal partnership for Veterans.
Medical-Legal Partnerships Serving Veterans: History, Growth & Progress
This issue brief provides a look at the state of the Veterans Affairs (VA) medical-legal partnership (MLP) field, including why and how legal services have grown in VA Medical Centers, where VA MLPs are operating today, and considerations for the future.
Financing Medical-Legal Partnerships: View from the Field
To date, nearly 350 health organizations nationwide have implemented medical-legal partnerships (MLPs). This fact sheet draws on national survey data from these organizations and their partnering legal organizations to describe programs’ average budgets as well as a variety of health, legal, and philanthropic funding streams that currently fund MLPs. It also discusses how MLPs are adapting to meet their funding challenges and highlights examples of programs implementing innovative Medicaid financing models to pay for MLP services.
A System-Level Approach to Addressing Health-Harming Legal and Social Needs
This case study delves into the inner-workings of the largest medical-legal partnership in the country between NYC Health + Hospitals and the LegalHealth division of the New York Legal Assistance Group. This partnership serve as an example in incorporating legal services into a holistic strategy to address the health-harming social and other non-medical factors that affect their patients.
Socially Vulnerable Older Adults and Medical-Legal Partnership
This issue brief describes the pressing legal needs facing older adults and ways that coordinating healthcare, legal, and social services can improve their care and well-being. The report details three medical-legal partnership programs serving older adults and their impact on preventing homelessness, improving financial stability, and more.
Complex Care Health Settings and Medical-Legal Partnerships
This fact sheet describes describes five complex care settings that have integrated medical-legal partnership services into care delivery. It also features data on the ways these partnerships have demonstrated initial success in improving both physical and mental health conditions as well as stabilizing income and housing for patients with complex conditions. Data also shows how MLPs curb costly overuse of healthcare services by addressing the root causes of patients’ problems.