Medical-Legal-Psychology Partnerships - Innovation in addressing social determinants of health in pediatric primary care

Medical-Legal Partnerships (MLP) help patients, families, and care teams address health-related social needs within medical settings. The MLP model interweaves medical and legal services, leveraging complementary expertise to address social, economic, and environmental barriers that perpetuate inequalities in physical and mental health outcomes. While MLPs address social determinants of health, including school-related mental health needs, the inclusion of child psychology expertise can improve educational outcomes, increase coordination and communication between the school, family, and medical system, and facilitate behavioral interventions. Given the frequent co-occurrence of physical illness, mental illness, and social needs, this limitation creates an opportunity for unique, interdisciplinary collaboration to systematically address child physical and mental health in an integrated manner. Here, we introduce an integrated model that explicitly brings child psychologists into the MLP to create a medical-legal-psychology partnership (MLPP).