Fact Sheet: The role of medical-legal partnerships for socially vulnerable older adults

Friday, July 24, 2020

By National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership & National Center for Equitable Care for Elders

Older Americans experience a range of complex and overlapping health and social challenges. These challenges include chronic disease management, functional limitations, emotional and financial abuse, understanding and accessing long-term care options, understanding and navigating insurance plans, social isolation, and barriers to accessing health care. This fact sheet looks at how integrating medical and legal services for older health center patients can help mitigate these challenges and begin to comprehensively address problems that directly impact a patient’s health and well-being. It examines how these partnerships work, and highlights two medical-legal partnership programs for seniors in San Francisco and Boston.