The academic medical-legal partnership: Training the next generation of health & legal professionals to work together to advance health justice

This report is the result of the combined experience of the Georgetown University Health Justice Alliance team and their 2019-2020 mixed methods survey of medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) operating with at least one academic partner. Using the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership’s original eight core elements of MLP as a backdrop to their study, the team defines how the academic medical-legal partnership (A-MLP) adheres to and deviates from these elements and formally recognizes three components unique to A-MLP.

Specifically, the team finds that A-MLPs focus on 1) educating pre-professional learners, 2) intentionally creating interprofessional learning environments, and 3) contributing to the evidence base for the MLP model as a health equity intervention.