Medical-Legal Partnership for Children

Boston Medical Center - 070072

Abstract Number: 070072

August 2007

MLPC was founded in 1993 by Dr. Barry Zuckerman as a local program serving patient-families at Boston Medical Center and its affiliated health centers.  MLPC aims to improve the health and well-being of vulnerable individuals, children and families by integrating legal services into the clinical setting.  By confronting the social determinants that influence health and treating vulnerable families with targeted legal interventions, lawyers join front-line healthcare providers to help people meet their basic needs for food, housing, education, health care and safety/stability.

In April 2006, MLPC launched its National Center to help the replication, advancement and integration of the medical-legal partnership model.  The National Center provides technical assistance to partnership sites, facilitates the MLP Network, and coordinates research and policy agendas. Lawyers and front-line health care providers – doctors, nurses and social workers – are now partnered at over 160 hospitals and health centers nationwide, serving children, the elderly, patients with cancer, pregnant women, the formerly incarcerated reentry community and other vulnerable populations.  The American Bar Association and American Academy of Pediatrics have passed resolutions in support of medical-legal partnership and the ABA is developing an in-house national support center to further extend the reach of this model by engaging the private bar.

MLPC is made possible by critical funding from the W.K. Kellogg and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations, Public Welfare Foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies and the broad support of the legal community.

For more information please visit:  www.MLPforchildren.org.

Contact Information:

Ellen Lawton, Esq.
Executive Director
Medical-Legal Partnership for Children
Boston Medical Center
91 E. Concord Street
Boston, MA 02118
Ellen.Lawton@bmc.org
617-414-3658

Additional Information:

• "Boston Medical Center Turns to Lawyers for a Cure" New York Times ( 178k)
• "Why Pediatricians Need Lawyers to Keep Children Healthy" by Barry Zuckerman, Megan Sandel, Lauren Smith, and Ellen Lawton  ( 318k)
• "The Lawyers is in: Why some doctors are prescribing legal remedies for their patients and how the legal profession can support this effort." – Public Interest Law Journal Boston University ( 340k)
• 2008 Medical-Legal Partnership Site Survey
• Revisiting the Social History for Child Health, Pediatrics
• ABA resolution
• AAP resolution
  

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