RI Aging & Health-Related Social Needs Learning-and-Action Lab Phase I Report

MLPB’s Aging and Health Related Social Needs (HRSN) Learning-and-Action Lab (the “Lab”) is a two-phased initiative designed to inform and improve clinic-based HRSN screening, referral, and problem-solving strategies impacting older adults who live in Rhode Island. Through generous funding from the Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island* the Lab explores how the screening experience of RI-based older adults (age 55 and over) can be enhanced, and how care teams and insurers can be more responsive to patients’ goals.

*Support provided through the Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island Community Health donor advised fund at the Rhode Island Foundation.

RI Aging & HRSN Learning-and-Action Lab Phase I Report

This month a new DULCE paper was published in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Entitled Cross-Sector Approach Expands Screening and Addresses Health-Related Social Needs in Primary Care, the paper presents data collected at 5 DULCE sites that shows:

  • an increase in family engagement with well-child visits; and
  • reliable detection of, and responses to, health-related social needs disclosed by families. 

Read the paper lead-authored by MaryCatherine Arbour here, as well as a companion blog post published by the Center for the Study of Social Policy.

In this Health Affairs blog, MLPB CEO Samantha Morton describes how cutting-edge communities of care are embracing collective responsibility by systematically incorporating legal information and rights education into social care planning and delivery.


“Encouraging communities of care to integrate legal information and rights education is an important and underleveraged strategy to advance health justice.”

Authored by the Boston Foundation, Health Resources in Action, and the Urban Institute, this evaluation report details findings from the Health Starts at Home program. MLPB was a partner in the Housing Prescriptions as Health Care program with Children’s HealthWatch, Project Hope, Boston Housing Authority, Boston Public Health Commission, Nuestra Comunidad Development Corporation, Boston Medical Center – Problem Solving Education, and Boston Medical Center (BMC) HealthNet Plan.

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This recently published commentary in the Rhode Island Medical Journal was a collaborative effort from MLPB and Care Transformation Collaborative – Rhode Island. To advance quality and impact of social care, organizations and systems should break down silos of knowledge and problem-solving pathways. Welcoming legal education and problem-solving insight within the community health workforce is an important first step.

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in Preventive Health Care for Families with Young Children (2020)

This brief, sixth in a series, reports on the multisite implementation of the preventive legal partnership component of Developmental Understanding and Legal Collaboration for Everyone (DULCE).

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MLPB’s team-facing legal partnering model connects the dots between access to justice and family wellbeing, bolstering early childhood sector goals at household, system policy levels.

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