Training the 21st-Century Health Care Team: Maximizing Interprofessional Education Through Medical–Legal Partnership

Abstract

For too long, many stakeholders in the health care delivery system have ignored the extent to which social determinants of health (SDH) are inextricably woven into and affect individual and population health. The health care system is undergoing a relatively rapid transformation, which has included in part an increasing recognition of SDH's effects. This recognition, in turn, has led to renewed calls for changing the way that physicians are trained and has accelerated medical education curricular reforms. This Perspective focuses on one such innovative method of team-based care and the opportunities for its integration into medical education: medical-legal partnership, a health care delivery model that embeds civil legal services into the spectrum of health care services provided to low-income or otherwise vulnerable patients and communities.

Health Justice Partnerships: An International Comparison of Approaches to Employing Law to Promote Prevention and Health Equity

“…Interprofessional education and training are essential to provide the core knowledge, skills and attributes students need as preparation for working effectively in HJPs. Students require an understanding of the complex determinants of health and how they “often manifest in the form of legal needs.” 56 They need skills in identifying these issues, building relationships, and providing trauma-informed care in an interprofessional team context. 57 By learning systems thinking, students are able to analyze root causes of problems and become equipped to advocate for changes to laws and policies.…”

Leveraging Academic-Medical Legal Partnerships to Advance Health Justice

“…57 In addition to advancing their advocacy skills, when students engage in such patientsto-policy systemic advocacy, they develop "nonbiologic determinants of health, cultural diversity, public health and prevention, and health policy and systems thinking," that they can take into their future practices. 58 Thus, deepening and increasing collaborative policy advocacy by A-MLPs has the benefit not only of supporting systemic change around immediate issues, but also of training future leaders in law and medicine to pursue the types of population health efforts and structural reforms needed to advance health justice.…”

Critical Perspectives to Advance Educational Equity and Health Justice

“…1 Health justice is an emerging framework that seeks to leverage law and policy in furtherance of health equity. 2 Health equity is achieved when "everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be healthy" 3 and "everyone can attain their full potential for health and wellbeing." 4 Health justice, in turn, focuses on eliminating health disparities and establishing fair treatment for those who have been historically or currently marginalized.…”