New article promotes law as a lens through which to view health promotion, disease prevention, and well-being

A new article in the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics, traces the roots of the medical-legal partnership approach to health as a way of promoting the use of law to remedy societal and institutional pathologies that lead to individual and population illness and to health inequalities. Authored by Joel Teitelbaum and Ellen Lawton, co-directors of the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership, the piece looks at the ways health care and law have collaborated historically. The piece argues that given current forces at work—the medical care and public health systems’ focus on social determinants of health, the increased use of value-based medical care payment reforms, and the emerging movement to train the next generation of health care and public health professionals in structural competency—the time is ripe to spread the view that law is an important lens through which we should view health promotion, disease prevention, and overall well-being. Click here to read the full article, “The Roots and Branches of the Medical-Legal Partnership Approach to Health: From Collegiality to Civil Rights to Health Equity.”