Medical Legal 101: How Doctors and Lawyers Improve Housing for Children

Background: Housing and health have been well recognized as essential to human health for well over a century. In the United Nations charter, housing is listed as a human right. However, in the United States, many families face housing issues such as homelessness, substandard housing, and high housing costs which threaten their health.

Housing issues present to health care providers in a number of different ways, including: elevated blood lead levels; asthma caused or exacerbated by poor housing conditions; rat bites; homelessness and frequent moves; and stress and anxiety caused by any of the above. Medical Legal Partnerships are a new innovation to help families address these issues through multi-disciplinary advocacy. Together, health care providers and lawyers work to identify and focus on housing issues that impede the health of children and families. They work in a number of ways, including through individual advocacy for patients, training of front line providers and systemic advocacy for affordable, safe housing. In this session, the presenter will discuss basic strategies for responding to substandard housing by using case examples to discuss approaches that have worked to improve housing for low-income tenants, as well as obstacles encountered. This session will also focus on the unique strenths of medical-legal advocacy, and describe how medical and legal professions working together with tenants can be stronger than either profession working alone.