With over 500 medical-legal partnerships (MLP) across the United States, MLP has emerged as a significant catalyst for building legal aid capacity, reach and impact. Over the past decade, health care systems, foundations, and public health entities across the US have invested millions of dollars in securing legal aid services to address legal problems—like housing and income—that directly and indirectly impact health.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the nation’s largest healthcare foundation, made early and significant investments in the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership to advance the MLP movement and highlight the role and impact of legal aid interventions on community and individual health. Since 2021, Kaiser Permanente (KP), the largest integrated health system in the US, has invested over $8 million dollars to build the capacity of legal aid organizations across 5 states in the Kaiser Permanente footprint to establish medical-legal partnerships, with a goal of helping people in KP communities avoid eviction and maintain housing stability.
Through additional investments in research, Kaiser Permanente has demonstrated that with proper training and funding, legal aid teams can swim upstream and help patients stabilize housing and focus on their health with as little as five hours of attorney time. Kaiser Permanente’s investment in civil legal aid infrastructure and research is not only a testament to their role as national leaders in the MLP movement, but as a catalyst for future health innovators committed to ensuring access to justice for all. Incorporating medical-legal partnership into civil legal practice is not only transforming the legal aid field, it is empowering health leaders and the health sector with a nuanced understanding of the role of civil legal aid, unleashing new resources, and building a broader base of advocates for justice. Health care sector leaders are now poised to amplify investments, framing and research that will usher in a new era of medical-legal partnership
