Medical-Legal Partnerships
According to the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership, there are currently 50,000,000 Americans who face health-harming legal needs which disproportionately affect low-income families, children, the elderly, and people of color.
Medical-Legal Partnerships (MLP) are valuable collaborations between the medical and legal communities. Under the MLP model, a case begins when a medical practitioner believes that a patient’s medical issues may be improved or resolved by a legal intervention. When the medical provider sends patients to CLA, our MLP staff investigates the cases and refers them to a CLA attorney or a volunteer lawyer. Our MLP staff also trains medical providers to spot issues affecting their patients’ health which can be solved by our legal advocacy.
Community Legal Aid operates MLPs:
- UMass Memorial Health Care, Worcester: Since the partnership began in 2015, the UMass MLP has assisted hundreds of pediatric and adult patients with legal needs related to special education, public benefits, housing and guardianship.
- Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC), Northampton: Thanks to a grant from the United Way of the Franklin and Hampshire Region, since 2018 CLA has worked with the Northampton VAMC to address the unmet health-harming needs of veterans in the Pioneer Valley area, including housing, healthcare, veteran-specific benefits, and discharge status upgrades.
- In addition, CLA has an MLP with the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Worcester.
Check out this great video of some of the clients who have been helped thanks to our MLP collaboration with UMass Memorial Health Care.
