In her first week on the job, Mary Frances Dennis \u201918 was sitting with a physician and an administrative assistant, helping them complete an affidavit that would allow a patient\u2019s case to proceed to court.<\/p>\n
Dennis is the first intern assigned to the new South Carolina Medical Legal Partnership (MLP), which formally connects Furman University, the Greenville Health System and South Carolina Legal Services in work to improve health outcomes for people throughout the Upstate, especially those living in poverty.<\/p>\n
The partnership\u2014the first of its kind in South Carolina\u2014coordinates and streamlines access to non-medical assistance when a medical problem has roots in or is made worse by a social or legal problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor someone who wants to go to law school or medical school, you couldn\u2019t ask for a better experience,\u201d Dennis said. \u201cI\u2019m learning something new every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The MLP acknowledges the reality that time spent in a doctor\u2019s office is only a small fraction of what goes into a person\u2019s overall health.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s recognizing that the fullness of healthcare policy has to be concerned with a lot more than healthcare,\u201d said David Gandolfo, philosophy professor and chair of the poverty studies program at Furman. \u201cWe believe that it really is a way of getting better health outcomes for the poor.\u201d<\/p>\n
The roots of the partnership go back years for everyone involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s frequently the case with a good idea,\u201d Gandolfo said. \u201cYou\u2019re not the only one who has it.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year marks both the 50th<\/sup> anniversary of Legal Services in Greenville and the 25th<\/sup> year that Furman students have interned with the agency. MLP interns will do what Furman interns have done at legal aid for years\u2014essentially the work of a paralegal. They\u2019ll draft complaints, investigate claims and observe in court.<\/p>\n Kirby Mitchell \u201990 is a senior litigation attorney with legal aid. Last fall he was designated fulltime to the MLP. He said the MLP interns\u2019 experiences will complement their academic work.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not criticizing classroom learning,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we\u2019re not that.\u201d<\/p>\n On the medical side, Dr. Nancy Powers \u201977, a GHS developmental pediatrician, supervised a graduate student, Annie Maertens, on a 2012 leadership project assessing whether the community would benefit from an MLP. The lawyers, pediatricians and families surveyed universally agreed it would.<\/p>\n Powers, who is now pediatrics medical director for the South Carolina MLP, identified a case that has come to be known as the MLP\u2019s first. One of her patients, who was almost 18, was charged with a crime, but there were civil issues involved as well. Mitchell took the case and early threads of the partnership were woven.<\/p>\n In 2014, two fellows training with South Carolina Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (LEND) worked with Powers to submit a grant request to the South Carolina Developmental Disabilities Council. That grant provided seed money for the MLP and Powers has since written and received others which funded its creation.<\/p>\n At the same, Furman was moving toward an MLP in an academic setting.<\/p>\n In 2011, Mitchell joined Gandolfo in teaching a May X poverty studies course. Mitchell brought the law into the picture and took students to court, introducing them to judges and helping them understand what it\u2019s like to represent low-income clients.<\/p>\n In 2015, the course shifted to focus on the intersection of poverty and health problems rooted in or exacerbated by legal problems. Mitchell and Gandolfo changes the name to Poverty, Medicine and the Law: Greenville\u2019s Medical-Legal Partnership.<\/p>\n They want their students to see how social determinants affect people\u2019s health and then ask themselves what can be done about those issues.<\/p>\n \u201cWe treat the class as a pipeline to get them to answer that question,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cWe want them to feel pressure to answer that question.\u201d<\/p>\n The official MLP was created on paper in spring 2016 and the work began the following fall.<\/p>\n Currently, the South Carolina MLP is the only one in the country\u2014and there are nearly 300 of them, in 41 states\u2014in which the educational institution involved is a liberal arts, undergraduate institution.<\/p>\n Gandolfo is confident Furman students bring the maturity and skills needed to the MLP. Their liberal arts training has prepared them to connect unconnected dots with innovation and new thinking.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s obvious that you need physicians and lawyers,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not so obvious that you need an undergraduate institution. But we know that they can be as useful in this kind of setting as medical students and law students are. And it\u2019s really beneficial for their own education and development.\u201d<\/p>\n The work interns observe and participate in will not only be useful to the MLP but also in shaping students\u2019 understanding of their own potential.<\/p>\n \u201cIt gives the students the chance to engage a real problem where real people are being hurt and get a feel for how can their talents and energy and their knowledge be used . . . to make people\u2019s lives better,\u201d Gandolfo said. \u201cIt\u2019s really motivating to see that your studies make you useful.\u201d<\/p>\n Doctors and lawyers and social workers will be learning, too, about each other\u2019s work and the potential for improvements and better connections.<\/p>\n \u201cAs we work together, we\u2019re learning systems and how we can interact more smoothly,\u201d Powers said.<\/p>\n GHS staff have always been able to refer patients to Legal Services. But the MLP is something more.<\/p>\n \u201cThe \u2018something more\u2019 is our working relationship\u2014earlier identification of concerns,\u201d Powers said. \u201cWe\u2019re working together as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr. Kerry Sease is medical director of the Bradshaw Institute for Community Child Health & Advocacy at GHS and senior medical director of pediatric academics. She said the doctor\u2019s office is often a trusted source of information. The MLP allows for a better connection between offices\u2014a \u201cwarm transfer,\u201d Sease called it, instead of simply handing over a phone number.<\/p>\n The MLP includes a care coordinator who can follow up with families and be sure the right connections are made. And after a legal solution is found, the same coordinator will stay in touch to be sure the resolution sticks.<\/p>\n \u201cIt should be a win-win,\u201d Sease said. \u201cA win for the families, a win for the system.\u201d<\/p>\n In the big picture, Powers envisions medical staff being better educated about all the ways the community can support patients.<\/p>\n \u201cNot every child needs a lawyer,\u201d she said. \u201cBut where are the community resources?\u201d<\/p>\n On her side, Dennis is paving the way for future interns, building the job description as she goes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s my job to say, \u2018This is what I want to do. Can I do this?\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a dream come true for Dennis, who\u2019s the daughter of a nurse but the first person in her family with an interest in law.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always been interested in how health plays a role in people\u2019s overall success,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s potentially what I want to do with my career\u2014so I feel pretty lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n She and the interns to follow will be preparing for a world in which the lines are more blurred as organizations work together to improve a community\u2019s overall health.<\/p>\n \u201cWho goes to the doctor expecting a lawyer?\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cBut it\u2019s different now.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s definitely a true collaborative model within a community,\u201d Powers said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In her first week on the job, Mary Frances Dennis \u201918 was sitting with a physician and an administrative assistant, helping them complete an affidavit that would allow a patient\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":272,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}