Training & Education

MLP | Boston offers physicians and allied health care providers, faculty, residents and medical students training and education programs that utilize medical-legal partnership as a tool to improve the health and wellbeing of vulnerable populations. The teaching model has five objectives:

1. Name the social determinants of health.
2. Screen patients for [legal or social] barriers to health.
3. Learn about laws and systems that govern theses barriers.
4. Diagnose patients in consultation with and/or by referral to legal partner.
5. Treat patients with effective advocacy intervention.

The model uses a case-based approach to enhance front-line health care providers' understanding of social determinants and to empower providers to address these factors as part of their clinical practice.

To do this successfully, physicians and allied health care providers need a practical method for eliciting a history of social circumstances that focuses on specific domains vital to patient health and wellbeing and amenable to direct intervention. Using the mnemonic I-HELP, the teaching model assists health care providers to screen for barriers to health and to address issues related to Income Supports, Housing and Utilities, Education, Legal Status (immigration), and Personal and Family Stability and Safety, each of which directly impacts health and wellbeing.

If you would like information about MLP | Boston advocacy trainings, please contact our Director of Training, Pamela Tames, at pamela.tames@bmc.org.