Title:University Educators Discuss Medical-Legal Partnerships at Fall 2019 Meeting

On September 18, 2019, Georgetown’s Health Justice Alliance convened a group of law faculty from across the country who also use the innovative healthcare delivery model known as medical-legal partnership (MLP) to provide students with intensive experiential learning opportunities.

Focused on integrating legal services into the delivery of healthcare for vulnerable and marginalized communities, MLPs help teach law students to work interprofessionally with doctors, medical students, and other healthcare professionals and learners to address the health-harming legal needs of patients.

Faculty in attendance represented a broad range of legal service and advocacy expertise around poor housing conditions, food insecurity, unmet educational needs, lack of health insurance, and other legal issues that act as barriers to health and well-being–expertise that they use to supervise students as they work on behalf of children and families, veterans, immigrants, the elderly, patients with HIV and cancer, and others.

“We are grateful for the generous funding provided by Brad (B’88) and Liz Winer through the Winer Family Foundation, which supported this first key step in bringing together law faculty to build community and share resources that are unique to academic medical-legal partnerships,” says Georgetown Law Professor Vicki W. Girard, the faculty director of the Health Justice Alliance. “We look forward to expanding this network and to adding the academic medical partners engaged in this important work to our future collaborative efforts.”

Sharing experiences and insights around their education, service, research and policy efforts gave participants the opportunity to discuss best practices, address common challenges, and focus on the unique features of their academic missions.

Following the meeting, many of them continued their conversations at the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership two-day summit held at National Harbor-DC Waterfront.

About the Health Justice Alliance

A partnership between Georgetown Law and Georgetown University Medical Center, the Health Justice Alliance is a multidisciplinary, cross-campus program that is bringing together the next generation of lawyers, doctors, and nurses and teaching them to work across their professions to advocate holistically for the health and legal needs of underserved children and families in Washington, D.C.