Bob Woodruff Foundation and NCMLP Convened MLP Meeting About Coordinated Care for Veterans

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. The event was held in partnership with the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership and in coordination with the VA.

The keynote was given by the Honorable James Byrne, General Counsel at the VA. Afterward, sessions framed the biomedical and mental health benefits of integrating attorneys into patient care. Speakers highlighted the barriers and opportunities that exist within federal policy to ensure that these models can continue to provide critical care to their patients and provide opportunity to thousands more by expanding medical-legal partnership across the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). Participants discussed the evidence base for these models, implementation strategies, and patient advocacy and awareness.

Moderator Margaret Harrell, PhD with speakers Linda Bagget, PhD, David Rosenthal, MD, and Jack Tsai, PhD. Photo credit: Heather O’Beirne Kelly.

Four new resources were released at the meeting, including a new MLP implementation toolkit, an issue brief on the history of MLPs serving Veterans, a fact sheet highlighting research on the efficacy of medical-legal partnership within VA, and a policy summary outlining current opportunities and challenges facing the growth of VA-based medical-legal partnerships.