The National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership hosted the Whole Person. Whole Team. Whole Communities. Summit in National Harbor, Maryland. The conference was headlined by Bethany Johnson-Javois, CEO of the St. Louis Integrated Health Network, and Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, the physician, scientist, and activist who exposed the Flint water crisis. The gathering, the 13th medical-legal partnership summit, explored the ways in which laws and policies affect the physical, emotional, and mental health of individuals, hasten health care crises among the most vulnerable, and preserve health inequities that keep whole communities from thriving.

On May 3, 2019, the Bob Woodruff Foundation convened a day-long meeting to strategize about how to better coordinate care across sectors for our nation’s Veterans. Practitioners from 23 medical-legal partnerships attended. Leadership from the U.S. Departments of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Health and Human Services as well as advocates working to drive policy impacting Veterans and military-connected families and caregivers were also in attendance.

On June 12, 2018, the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership convened a meeting at The George Washington University exploring ways that cross-sector partnership can advance the health of people in rural communities, with a special focus on how health care organizations can partner with local legal services to address patients' health-harming social needs.

Earlier this month, the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership teamed with the Office for Access to Justice at the U.S. Department of Justice and the Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable to host a meeting at The George Washington University on the ongoing opioid crisis and how medical-legal partnerships can play a role in alleviating its effects.

Thanks to generous support from the Public Welfare Foundation, the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership at the George Washington University and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association kicked off the second year of their Where Health Meets Justice Fellowship yesterday, designed to build healthcare expertise in the civil legal aid community. Sixteen senior level staff from civil legal aid agencies in 13 states and the District of Columbia met in Washington, D.C. to participate in workshops with healthcare experts.

Forty-five legal aid, healthcare and government leaders representing dozens of Native American tribes met in Tuba City, Arizona, on May 29, 2014, to better understand the issues affecting tribal health and discuss the role legal care can play in addressing barriers to health care.  The meeting, “Partnering for Native Health,” was convened by DNA-People’s Legal Services and the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership, with funding from The Kresge Foundation.

Six children’s hospitals and seven legal organizations met in Bentonville, Arkansas today to kick off Better Team for Child Health. This children’s hospital learning network will study the impact of legal care on child health and develop recommendations on how to better build an interprofessional healthcare team that responds to the complex social and health-harming legal needs of children. It’s being convened by The Advisory Board Company, the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership at the George Washington University, and Walmart.