FTLF attorney Laura Hoffman recently spoke at the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership’s 9th Annual Summit in Seattle, Washington. The National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership (NCMLP) is an organization dedicated to integrating the expertise of health and legal professionals to help transform the response to social determinants of health.

Laura presented at the Summit on Operational Imperatives: Medical-Legal Partnership Financing and Memorandum of Understanding Development. The session discussed the importance of aligning medical-legal partnerships with healthcare priorities in order to demonstrate the value in medical-legal partnerships, and ultimately attain financial and institutional support. The session used community health centers as case studies to talk specifically about how to develop agreements to help ensure project success. Community health centers are well-positioned to participate in medical-legal partnerships, as they are already mindful of many of the social determinants of health that create hardships for vulnerable populations.

The NCMLP Summit joined over three hundred physicians, nurses, social workers, attorneys, and public health practitioners with national leaders from the health, public health, and legal fields to focus on integrating health and legal care to improve healthcare delivery, with special emphasis on the Affordable Care Act.