Strength in Numbers…State & Regional MLP Coordination

Kate Marple
National Program Coordinator, National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership

One of the joys of my job is talking with partnerships sites around the country every day about their work – the successes and innovations and the challenges and frustrations that come from interdisciplinary work with vulnerable patient-clients. When we’re in our individual health clinics, legal aid offices and law schools, it’s very easy to feel like we do this work in a vacuum. Maybe no one in a 50 mile radius (or more) does anything like medical-legal partnership – and you’re the only attorney in your office dealing with the questions and issues you come across daily. Your legal aid colleagues may be thinking about the best way to handle eviction defense at housing court, while you’re thinking about the best way for health care workers to reach you. Should I carry a pager? Do we create an online referral system? What about HIPPA? For health care workers, many of your colleagues remain mystified at the difference between a legal clinic and a primary care clinic, and baffled by the subtleties of chain of command advocacy that you are struggling to master.

The good news? There’s a large medical-legal partnership community and it’s growing! You might not be able to walk across the hall to triage a problem, but you can pick up the phone, send an e-mail, or access online resources. Or in some states, you can link up with your regional or statewide medical-legal partnership group.

I just returned from Syracuse where the New York Coalition of Medical-Legal Partnerships held a statewide conference. The Coalition brings together legal and health care workers from NY who either work at an active medical-legal partnership or are developing one. The Coalition meets regularly, but this was the first statewide conference.

Ninety people from all across NY state participated – a testament to the depth of medical-legal partnership work and leadership in the state, including from long-standing partnership sites like LegalHealth and the Syracuse Family Advocacy Program. Sessions were offered on funding, medical champions, starting a partnership, ethics and confidentiality and more – all of which allowed participants to talk about some of the big picture issues facing their partnership and bring tangible ideas back to their own programs.

But most importantly, the conference provided a forum – for partnership site updates, to ask program specific questions and brainstorm with colleagues. It’s a great thing to realize that there are already answers to many of your questions, that your colleagues have been there before. It’s about more than just not reinventing the wheel (although that’s really important); it’s about a sense of community and feeling supported in the work you do. I left the conference with a renewed energy for the work we do – and I know I wasn’t the only one!

Regional groups like the NY Coalition are the perfect mechanism for cross-site evaluation and policy initiatives and are well situated to pursue state bar resolutions and state legislation (NY is working on both).

There are medical-legal partnership statewide and regional collaborations in New York, California, Ohio, Virginia, New England, and the Midwest. Most groups meet in person several times a year, and have listservs for their members to stay in touch in between meetings.

If you live in a state with a regional collaboration, it’s so important to connect with them – to share resources and add your voice to the work being done on the state level. There is strength in numbers…and our numbers are growing.

Medical-Legal Partnerships: NY Professionals Working Together to Improve Health Care was held on Friday, June 5th at the Syracuse University School of Law. The conference was videotaped and will be available on the Syracuse University School of Law website shortly.