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Is Poverty Making Me Sick? An Example of the Impact of Medical-Legal Partnership on Keeping Children Healthy

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Structural Competency in Mental Health and Medicine

Abstract

Health disparities in childhood are widespread and are exacerbated by risks related to social and structural determinants of health. Such factors, including substandard housing and food insecurity, contribute to adverse health outcomes. For example, much is now known about the higher incidence and severity of asthma among children living in substandard housing. A medical-legal partnership (MLP) is an interdisciplinary collaboration between a medical entity such as a hospital or clinic and a legal entity such as a nonprofit legal aid office or law school. Through MLPs, healthcare and legal teams share the same approach to improving health for the children and families they serve by addressing factors at the root of health disparities. This multidisciplinary approach to managing, and closing, health equity gaps can have another positive side effect as well. Placing legal advocates alongside medical professionals can support advances in medical education in topics related to structural competence. Training medical students and residents in the MLP approach is an opportunity to teach the next generation of physicians the skills necessary to recognize and address barriers to health on the patient, clinic/institution, and population levels. This chapter supports such concepts through the presentation of a case related to housing and public benefit challenges frequently encountered by families in a pediatric primary care office. The case illustrates the power of an interprofessional approach to confronting real-world risks related to the social determinants of health.

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Abbreviations

CCHMC:

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center

Child HeLP:

Cincinnati Child Health-Law Partnership

MLP:

Medical-legal partnership

PPCC:

Pediatric Primary Care Center

SDH:

Social determinants of health

SNAP:

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

USDA:

United States Department of Agriculture

WIC:

Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Divisions of General & Community Pediatrics and Hospital Medicine, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Andrew F. Beck

  2. Department of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Andrew F. Beck

  3. Division of General and Community Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Adrienne W. Henize & Melissa D. Klein

  4. Mallory Curran Consulting, Brooklyn, NY, USA

    Mallory Curran

  5. Legal Aid Society of Greater Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Donita S. Parrish

  6. Department of Family Medicine, St. Joseph’s Hospital & Medical Center/Dignity Health, Phoenix, AZ, USA

    Edward G. Paul

  7. Department of Family Medicine, Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    Elizabeth Tobin-Tyler

  8. Department of Health Services, Policy and Practice, Brown University School of Public Health, Providence, RI, USA

    Elizabeth Tobin-Tyler

Authors
  1. Andrew F. Beck
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  2. Mallory Curran
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  3. Adrienne W. Henize
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  4. Melissa D. Klein
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  5. Donita S. Parrish
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  6. Edward G. Paul
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  7. Elizabeth Tobin-Tyler
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrew F. Beck .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. New York University, New York, NY, USA

    Helena Hansen

  2. Center for Medicine, Health, and Society, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

    Jonathan M. Metzl

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Beck, A.F. et al. (2019). Is Poverty Making Me Sick? An Example of the Impact of Medical-Legal Partnership on Keeping Children Healthy. In: Hansen, H., Metzl, J. (eds) Structural Competency in Mental Health and Medicine. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10525-9_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10525-9_10

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-10524-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-10525-9

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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