AAMC releases three tools to help MLPs measure their impact on health and health equity

Thursday, September 26, 2019

The Association of American Medical Colleges’ Accelerating Health Equity, Advancing through Discovery (AHEAD) initiative released three tools to help medical-legal partnerships measure their impact on health and health equity. All of the tools are available on the AHEAD website.

 

  • The AHEAD Medical-Legal Partnership Patient and Community Health Pre/Post Survey provides a core set of questions that assess the impact of legal interventions on a patient’s perception of her health and the quality of services receives from an MLP. The survey is designed for broad applicability across different intervention models and describes specific administration instructions for the pre- and post- surveys in detail.

 

  • The AHEAD Medical-Legal Partnership Learner Pre/Post Survey includes a core set of questions used to examine the effect—on staff member knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs—of various types of education about social determinants of health and medical-legal partnerships. The survey design supports the evaluation of four Entrustable Professional Activities and six General Physician Competencies and applies across different educational intervention models or intensities, including learners in various health professions.

 

  • The Association of American Medical Colleges’ Medical-Legal Partnership Logic Model represents how MLP processes and activities affect learners, patients, and the health system in the short, medium, and long term.

 

Through a 2015 competitive award process, the AAMC selected three medical-legal partnerships to participate in a three-year cohort to develop and implement metrics to evaluate the impact of MLPs on (1) Patient and community health and health inequities; (2) Cost savings, institutional benefits, and efficiencies; and (3) Student, resident, and fellow educational outcomes. These tools were developed as part of that project. The participating MLPs were the Healthy Together MLP (a collaboration of the Children’s National Health System and the Children’s Law Center), the Health Law Partnership (a collaboration of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Georgia State University College of Law, and the Atlanta Legal Aid Society), and the Indiana University School of Medicine–Eskenazi Health Medical-Legal Partnership.