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.
Teaching the Social Determinants of Health through Medical-Legal Partnerships: A Systematic Review
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.
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.