The Association Between Civil Legal Needs After Incarceration, Psychosocial Stress, and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors

Abstract

Many formerly incarcerated people have civil legal needs that can imperil their successful re-entry to society and, consequently, their health. We categorize these needs and assess their association with cardiovascular disease risk factors in a sample of recently released people. We find that having legal needs related to debt, public benefits, housing, or healthcare access is associated with psychosocial stress, but not uncontrolled high blood pressure or high cholesterol, in the first three months after release.

Medical-Legal Partnerships: a promising approach for addressing health-harming legal needs among people with HIV

“…MLPs in HIV care are an emerging approach that combines traditional medical care with legal support to address the HHLN of PWH (Martinez et al, 2017 , 2022 ; Muñoz-Laboy et al, 2019 ; Yamanis et al, 2019 ). In other settings and with other populations including veterans, immigrants, formerly incarcerated individuals, children, and patients with cancer in palliative care (Weintraub et al, 2010 ; Sege et al, 2015 ; Tsai et al, 2017 ; Benfer et al, 2018 ; Selnau and Goldberg, 2019 ; Chen et al, 2021 ; League et al, 2021 ; Griesemer et al, 2023 ; Lu et al, 2023 ; Ramos et al, 2023 ), MLPs have been beneficial for addressing complex legal needs.…”