March 2021 Newsletter

Can we talk? Yes, if it’s about people’s legal rights, risks, and remedies.

March 2021

Check out our new Blog post

on MLPB’s telementoring partnership with CTC-RI’s Community Health Teams!

Telehealth is here to stay, and if we can accelerate and assure Digital Equity, it may be a powerful tool for individual, family, and population health. But extending telehealth to meet people’s social, economic, and environmental needs is a new frontier — so supports and guardrails for the community health workforce are critical. MLPB is honored to deploy this capacity-building strategy with a number of communities of care — including the Care Transformation Collaborative / PCMH Kids – Rhode Island.

Making sense of paid leave rights for caregivers is hard —
is there a overview?

Yes! Check out this new article, State Paid Family and Medical Leave Laws: Growth and Gaps in Coverage, co-authored by MLPB’s Samantha Morton with valued colleagues from the Brown Schools of Medicine and Public Health and the Center for WorkLife Law.

This new publication is currently only accessible with a journal subscription; another helpful resource can be found here.
Want more information about family and medical leave options? Check out the Employment section of MLPB’s Digital Digest here (for federal law), here (for Massachusetts) and here (for Rhode Island).

Thank you, Start Early, for welcoming us at the 2021 National Home Visiting Summit last week!

MLPB team member Kate Gannon joined valued colleagues from The Children’s Trust in presenting on A Legal Partnering Roadmap from Evaluation of Need to Successful Intervention. We look forward to continuing this conversation with early childhood innovators who want to explore the power of Legal Partnering for Child and Family Health!

In the Spotlight: Preventing Utility Shut-Offs for Seriously Ill People

Last week, our colleagues at the National Consumer Law Center released a comprehensive report on state-based laws that protect individuals and families from utility service shut-off when a household member is seriously ill. The upshot? Many of these state-based protections are:

unnecessarily narrow;
under-communicated to people and communities;
difficult for eligible households to navigate and secure; and
too short-term given the nature of serious and chronic illness.

If we care about energy security as a structural driver of health, there is a lot of policy work to be done across the country. Are you part of a community of care that is:

Prioritizing screening for utility needs, perhaps among other for health-related social needs (HRSN)?
Tracking the many barriers to continuous, stable gas, electricity and water that people served by your community of care face?

If you want to move from people-to-policy in your state:

1. Check out NCLC’s specific policy recommendations at pp. 19-20

2. Orient your org’s/system’s Government Relations team; and

3. Get in touch with MLPB’s Legal Director Jeannine Casselman to learn about potential synergies with NCLC, the national DULCE Learning Network, and more!

Questions about (1) law and policy changes impact the people you serve, and (2) role-aligned problem-solving strategies you can offer? Visit MLPB’s Digital Digest for curated information on evolving resources, benefits, and legal protections — currently covering key federal law as well as state laws in MA and RI.

Care Delivery & Financing Transformation