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.
How Health Center Care Teams Can Address Health and Housing for Patients Involved With the Justice System
This issue brief aims to provide an overview of both the civil and criminal justice systems in the United States. It also describes the cyclical relationship between those systems and housing insecurity, including homelessness. Based on this foundation, the brief outlines potential workflow considerations for health centers working to reduce health disparities for patients and families.
VA MLPs: Implementation Guidance and Suggested Measures
This guide offers a framework for identifying the areas of MLP operations for programs based at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) sites that may benefit from implementation guidance. It includes potential measures for gauging MLP performance.
Medical-Legal Partnerships Benefit Families of Developmentally Disabled Children
This study assessed the benefits provided by the Health Law Partnership (HeLP), a medical-legal partnership (MLP) in Atlanta, Georgia, to pediatric patients with neuro-developmental disabilities and their families. Over two and half years, legal services led patient families to obtain/retain benefits exceeding $4.9 million in total value. State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and other health-related assistance resolved cases resulted in an average benefit value of $18,925 per case, followed by SSI and education cases with an average benefit value of $9,585 and $5,336, respectively. Findings were published in The International Journal of Health, Wellness, and Society.
Expanding VA-Housed Legal Clinics to Serve Veterans
This issue brief highlights how Veterans Affairs (VA)-housed legal clinics can expand their work to serve more Veterans in a targeted manner by adopting best practices from medical-legal partnerships.
Medical-Legal Partnership Workflows For Screening And Legal Services
This graphic depicts a typical workflow for screening, legal services, follow-up, and continuous quality improvement activities at a medical-legal partnership (MLP). It can be used by healthcare and legal partners to plan for and improve their own MLP workflows.
An Interprofessional Approach to Teaching Advocacy Skills: Lessons from an Academic Medical–Legal Partnership
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.