Medical-legal collaboration gets $200,000 grant
The national Legal Services Corporation has awarded Worcester-based Community Legal Aid a two-year Pro Bono Innovation Fund grant valued at more than $200,000, according to a statement Wednesday from UMass Memorial Health Care, Community Legal Aid and Legal Services Corporation.
Community Legal Aid will partner with UMass Memorial Health Care to develop a clinic-based program to help the area’s low-income and minority communities tackle legal needs that negatively impact health. The initiative will add legal services providers, including pro bono private attorneys, to the clinical care team to help address such legal barriers to good health as substandard housing and access to benefits.
“Working with our legal partners at Community Legal Aid has taught me to ask my patients and families questions that I wasn’t taught in medical school but which do impact my patients’ health,” Beverly Nazarian, M.D., physician leader for UMass Memorial’s partnership with Community Legal Aid, said in the statement.
“For example, asking about housing helps me to identify issues like mold or pests that may be worsening a patient’s asthma and resulting in emergency room visits or hospitalization,” she said.
Legal services will be provided to patients through a new primary care model at three UMass Memorial Medical Center clinics that serve a high number of Medicaid patients. The goal is for better health outcomes for some of the “most vulnerable families and individuals in Central Massachusetts” through care coordination and bringing increased behavioral health into the primary care setting, according to UMass.
Jonathan Mannina, executive director of Community Legal Aid, said: “This grant allows us to expand our services in Central Massachusetts and provide hundreds of new volunteer opportunities to private lawyers with quality support and training.”
In collaboration with UMass Memorial’s Office of General Counsel and Department of Community Relations, Community Legal Aid will recruit pro bono (volunteer) attorneys to participate in the new program. A medical-legal partnership attorney will support and train the pro bono attorneys and will be embedded on-site in the UMass Memorial clinics, the statement said.
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments