 The Roots and Branches of the Medical-Legal Partnership Approach to Health: From Collegiality to Civil Rights to Health Equity

Abstract

This Article traces the roots of the medical-legal partnership (MLP) approach to health as a way of promoting the use of law to remedy societal and institutional pathologies that lead to individual and population illness and to health inequalities. Given current forces at work - the medical care and public health systems' foctis on social determinants of health, the increased use of value-based medical care payment reforms, and the emerging movement to train the next generation of health care and public health professionals in structural competency - the time is ripe to spread the view that law is an important lens through which we should view health promotion, disease prevention, and overall well-being.