Partners in advancing health through justice– COVID-19-related pressures on systems, workforces, and the people they serve are unprecedented and growing daily. Access to legal knowledge and expertise – and understanding how to put that information into practice – focuses our power to make a difference. Throughout this evolving COVID-19 crisis, MLPB will: Remain fully operational and available to our partners to effectively support their teams and join with people and populations – families with young children, adults with complex conditions, older adults, and others – who are confronting new and extreme barriers to safe and healthy housing, food access, and family stability.
Launch, on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 24, an open-access Digital Digest on Addressing Health-related Social Needs in the COVID-19 Landscape on our website.
Host, on the morning of Wednesday, May 13, a livestreamed virtual event spotlighting best practices for partnering with families to unlock access to health-promoting benefits, services and legal protections in this new landscape.
Continue to be guided by core principles and goals, including human-centeredness, structural competence, sound legal role differentiation, and expansion of financing pathways for legal problem-solving support.For years, MLPB has partnered with leading-edge organizations and initiatives in the health ecosystem to design and deliver mission-critical social care in ways that account for people’s legal risks, rights and remedies. These organizations have joined MLPB on our preventive law journey, embracing deeper focus on legal risk identification and mitigation so that fewer individuals and families “[bump] into sharp legal things” in ways that harm health, exacerbate toxic stress, and deepen inequities. The power of this shift away from “legal emergency room” care continues to be validated in rigorous testing environments like DULCE and Health Starts at Home. The pandemic landscape is a new normal and demands strengthening of acute care and safety net infrastructures. Simultaneously, we must address the “ripple” pandemics that have long simmered and are now swelling due to COVID-19-driven barriers to employment, income, housing, food, and more. MLPB is committed to supporting systems and workforces to become proactive partners in identifying people’s legal risks, rights and remedies – to accelerate access to health-promoting resources, services and legal protections in this moment and beyond. Take care. This is an important time to reflect on both What You Can Do When There’s Nothing to Doand also on what we can do together – through legally-informed problem-solving strategies – to expand the community of practice committed to advancing health through justice. Wishing you peace-
