Medical-Legal Partnership
Helping Vulnerable Individuals and Families Meet Their Basic Needs
Not every illness has a biological remedy. A family forced to choose between food and heat in the winter months cannot be treated with a prescription or a vaccination. Similarly, an asthmatic person will never breathe symptom free – no matter how much medication is administered – if he or she returns from the doctor’s office to mold-infested housing, as thousands do.
All over the U.S., health care providers who take care of low-income individuals and families are turning to a new specialist to help keep them healthy and safe: lawyers who practice poverty law.
Medical-legal partnerships integrate lawyers in a health setting to help patients navigate the complex government and community systems that often hold solutions to many social determinants of health – income supports for food insecure families, utility shut-off protection during cold winter months, and mold removal from the home of asthmatics.
Read more about how MLP went from a local program to a National Center
Pro Bono Partners Invest in MLP
In 2009, Pro Bono partners provided over $13 million in in-kind services to medical-legal partnerships across the U.S.Click here for more info from the 2010 MLP Network Site Survey.
Find out more about the role of pro bono in MLP by visiting the American Bar Association's Medical-Legal Partnerships Pro Bono Support Project: Pro Bono as a Healing Art website.
