Human Rights versus Humanitarian Aid – and Compromises: The Case of MN Missionaries during the Armenian Genocide

​This project investigates the role of MN missionaries, who alerted the world to grave human rights violations against Armenians in the Ottoman Empire while simultaneously providing humanitarian aid. Substantial and underexplored materials in the Minnesota History archives were used to study ways in which these two tasks may conflict but also forge an alliance, for the time of the Armenian genocide.This research was supported by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP).Bhatnagar, Prashasti. (2017). Human Rights versus Humanitarian Aid – and Compromises: The Case of MN Missionaries during the Armenian Genocide. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/189206

How Should We Measure Effectiveness of Medical-Legal Partnerships?

Medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) try to mitigate health inequity by uniting legal and health professionals to respond to legal determinants of patients’ health. While there is a long tradition of “patients-to-policy” work in MLPs, the current empirical evidence base has evaluated MLP effectiveness by assessing benefits to individual patients, clinicians, and hospital and legal systems. This article calls for future research to measure how community power, which includes shifting power to impacted communities to develop and lead equity-focused agendas, is built as both a process and an outcome of MLPs

The Academic Medical-Legal Partnership: Training the Next Generation of Health & Legal Professionals to Work Together to Advance Health Justice

As the national medical-legal partnership (MLP) movement grows, the need for doctors, nurses, social workers, other health professionals, and lawyers who have the knowledge, skills, and experience to collaborate effectively in this holistic healthcare approach is increasing. Given the unique role that institutions of higher education play in training students as they develop their professional identities, members of the Georgetown University Health Justice Alliance sought to build on prior efforts to define the MLP model by focusing on MLPs that exist in academic settings as a specific type of MLP. This report is based on the results of an environmental scan of MLPs that had evidence of engagement with a medical or law school and reflects the core elements of those MLPs as embodied by their objectives, activities, and unique features. The scan started with prior research conducted by the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership, which categorized MLPs based on their targeted patient populations and identified eight core elements of infrastructure shared across MLPs. The Health Justice Alliance research team then collected data on the impact of interprofessional MLP learning on core undergraduate and graduate medical education knowledge, attitudes, and skill competencies sets for students. Other reports and articles describing specific MLP programs that create interprofessional education opportunities for law and medical students to learn and practice together also provided foundational background

All Care is Health Care: How Healthcare-Legal Partnerships Are Challenging the Biomedical Paradigm

This project comprehensively examines how healthcare-legal partnerships (HLPs) are challenging the biomedical paradigm. I explore this in clinics through rich semi-structured interviews with HLP advocates (social workers, healthcare administrators, nurses, lawyers, and physicians) and focus groups with patients. In this paper, I will highlight the ways in which on-site legal services in clinics help in breaking down barriers that limit access to care and thus reduce anxiety and stress in patients. I will also argue that while helpful, HLPs continue to operate under a neoliberal biomedical model-based health care system and hence, do not provide a comprehensive solution to the complex health needs of patients. Health issues are not just legal issues; they are social issues that need to be addressed using a structural care approach

How Should We Measure Effectiveness of Medical-Legal Partnerships?

Medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) try to mitigate health inequity by uniting legal and health professionals to respond to legal determinants of patients’ health. While there is a long tradition of “patients-to-policy” work in MLPs, the current empirical evidence base has evaluated MLP effectiveness by assessing benefits to individual patients, clinicians, and hospital and legal systems. This article calls for future research to measure how community power, which includes shifting power to impacted communities to develop and lead equity-focused agendas, is built as both a process and an outcome of MLPs

How medical-legal partnerships help address the social determinants of mental health

Conditions related to where you are born, live, learn, work, and age—the social determinants of health—account for more than half of overall health and well-being. Problems in these areas include food insecurity, unsafe and unaffordable housing, family violence and instability, employment discrimination, inadequate education, and lack of access to health insurance and care. Such problems negatively affect physical and mental health and contribute to the health disparities that disproportionately impact low-income and marginalized communities of color. Housing instability and homelessness, for example, can increase the risk of chronic illness, infectious disease, and death, and also have a profound impact on mental health, creating or exacerbating psychological distress, anxiety, and depression. Research indicates that even years after an eviction, mothers are more likely to be depressed and report feeling increased material hardship and parental stress. Many underlying social determinants of health implicate or raise legal issues that require advocacy to overcome. One patient might skip critical medical or psychiatric appointments because he is unaware of his legal rights in the workplace and is afraid of losing his job if he misses work. Another may suffer from severe depression even with significant counseling and medication management because of anxiety and stress associated with overwhelming debt or the threat of imminent family violence. Such “health-harming legal needs” create barriers to achieving good health and are major contributors to health disparities. Although nurses and other healthcare providers understand the significant impact social determinants have on health, they do not always draw connections between those determinants and the legal issues they raise. Nor do they generally think of law as a tool that can be prescribed to improve a patient\u27s health and well-being. Medical Legal Partnership (MLP) is an innovative healthcare model that fills that gap by bringing doctors, nurses, and other health professionals together with lawyers to address unmet legal needs that negatively impact health and well-being

How medical-legal partnerships help address the social determinants of mental health

Conditions related to where you are born, live, learn, work, and age—the social determinants of health—account for more than half of overall health and well-being. Problems in these areas include food insecurity, unsafe and unaffordable housing, family violence and instability, employment discrimination, inadequate education, and lack of access to health insurance and care. Such problems negatively affect physical and mental health and contribute to the health disparities that disproportionately impact low-income and marginalized communities of color. Housing instability and homelessness, for example, can increase the risk of chronic illness, infectious disease, and death, and also have a profound impact on mental health, creating or exacerbating psychological distress, anxiety, and depression. Research indicates that even years after an eviction, mothers are more likely to be depressed and report feeling increased material hardship and parental stress. Many underlying social determinants of health implicate or raise legal issues that require advocacy to overcome. One patient might skip critical medical or psychiatric appointments because he is unaware of his legal rights in the workplace and is afraid of losing his job if he misses work. Another may suffer from severe depression even with significant counseling and medication management because of anxiety and stress associated with overwhelming debt or the threat of imminent family violence. Such “health-harming legal needs” create barriers to achieving good health and are major contributors to health disparities. Although nurses and other healthcare providers understand the significant impact social determinants have on health, they do not always draw connections between those determinants and the legal issues they raise. Nor do they generally think of law as a tool that can be prescribed to improve a patient\u27s health and well-being. Medical Legal Partnership (MLP) is an innovative healthcare model that fills that gap by bringing doctors, nurses, and other health professionals together with lawyers to address unmet legal needs that negatively impact health and well-being

The Academic Medical-Legal Partnership: Training the Next Generation of Health & Legal Professionals to Work Together to Advance Health Justice

As the national medical-legal partnership (MLP) movement grows, the need for doctors, nurses, social workers, other health professionals, and lawyers who have the knowledge, skills, and experience to collaborate effectively in this holistic healthcare approach is increasing. Given the unique role that institutions of higher education play in training students as they develop their professional identities, members of the Georgetown University Health Justice Alliance sought to build on prior efforts to define the MLP model by focusing on MLPs that exist in academic settings as a specific type of MLP. This report is based on the results of an environmental scan of MLPs that had evidence of engagement with a medical or law school and reflects the core elements of those MLPs as embodied by their objectives, activities, and unique features. The scan started with prior research conducted by the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership, which categorized MLPs based on their targeted patient populations and identified eight core elements of infrastructure shared across MLPs. The Health Justice Alliance research team then collected data on the impact of interprofessional MLP learning on core undergraduate and graduate medical education knowledge, attitudes, and skill competencies sets for students. Other reports and articles describing specific MLP programs that create interprofessional education opportunities for law and medical students to learn and practice together also provided foundational background

Examining structural interventions that address racialized health and well-being outcomes: a systematic scoping review

Despite decades of research examining the relationship between social determinants of health and wellbeing outcomes, little is understood relative to the nature and strength of interventions that systematically address the root causes and drivers of racialized inequities (Braveman & Gottlieb, 2014). The aim of this systematic scoping review is to identify and map the various components and characteristics of interventions that address structural racism relative to health, wellbeing, and structural outcomes by examining the literature inclusive of the context and populations where these interventions were implemented