{"id":9587,"date":"2021-10-18T12:46:05","date_gmt":"2021-10-18T12:46:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2021\/10\/29\/medical-legal-partnership-celebrates-five-years-of-finding-solutions-to-family-crises\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:44:02","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T19:44:02","slug":"medical-legal-partnership-celebrates-five-years-of-finding-solutions-to-family-crises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/medical-legal-partnership-celebrates-five-years-of-finding-solutions-to-family-crises\/","title":{"rendered":"Medical Legal Partnership finds solutions to family crises through collaboration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, you know exactly where to go to solve a health problem. And sometimes it\u2019s not so clear.<\/p>\n

Imagine, for example, a patient whose asthma is exacerbated by the roaches infesting her apartment. Who can help best: a doctor to treat her asthma symptoms, or a lawyer to help make sure the conditions in her apartment are livable?<\/p>\n

Meaningful solutions to many health problems require legal expertise, says Leslie Fisk, the managing attorney of the Greenwood office of South Carolina Legal Services.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen clients are having problems, they don\u2019t think, \u2018Oh, this is a legal problem\u2019 or \u2018Oh, this must be a health problem,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re just thinking, \u2018There are roaches in my apartment, and I can\u2019t handle this anymore.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Medical Legal Partnership (MLP), celebrating its fifth anniversary this week, was established to help families address civil-legal problems that impact their health, such as moldy apartments, issues with benefits, elder care and more.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Counterclockwise from left: Kara Davis, evaluation coordinator for Furman\u2019s\u00a0Institute for the Advancement of Community Health,\u00a0Rachel Riley \u201923, Riya Misal \u201922, Ellie Bisese a Master of Science Community Engaged Medicine student,\u00a0Becky Warner, an MLP coordinator, and\u00a0Jordan Childs, a MSCEM student, during an orientation to the MLP in 2021<\/p><\/div>\n

The partnership between Furman University\u2019s Institute for the Advancement of Community Health<\/a>, Prisma Health<\/a>\u00a0and South Carolina Legal Services<\/a> became official on Oct. 22, 2016, with the goal of working to improve health outcomes for low-income families throughout the Upstate.<\/p>\n

Throughout those five years, the partnership \u2014 the first of its kind in South Carolina \u2014 has increased access to legal assistance for hundreds of patients whose medical problems have roots in or are made worse by a social or legal challenge.<\/p>\n

In 2019, the MLP received a $1.025 million three-year grant from The Duke Endowment to engage in statewide collaboration with other Medical Legal Partnerships to determine best practices and achieve maximum impact.<\/p>\n

This impact is evident in cases like Melanie Stiles\u2019.<\/p>\n

Stiles was one of the Upstate MLP\u2019s first clients. Her son, Jacob Stiles, who has autism and other behavioral and mood disorders, got into legal trouble at age 17. But he turned 18 in jail \u2013 beyond the age where his parents could legally advocate for him.<\/p>\n

At the time, the family\u2019s Prisma Health pediatrician, Nancy Powers, was already in conversation with Kirby Mitchell \u201990, a senior litigation attorney with South Carolina Legal Services, about forming an MLP. Jacob was just the impetus they needed to move forward. Today, however, all of cases the MLP takes on are civil in nature.<\/p>\n

Mitchell, who became the MLP\u2019s legal director, helped Melanie Stiles obtain guardianship and found a public defender to take the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cJacob got his day in court,\u201d she remembered, \u201cand I had the opportunity to write a letter to the judge, just sharing from my heart that it would not do society well for him to be incarcerated for 45 years \u2013 but to put him in a situation to assist him in doing right, that would be much more beneficial. And at the end of the day, thankfully, the judge agreed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jacob Stiles is now living on his own in transitional housing, and Melanie Stiles is still grateful for the help her family received.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur hands would have been tied if it wasn\u2019t for the MLP,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, you know exactly where to go to solve a health problem. And sometimes it\u2019s not so clear. Imagine, for example, a patient whose asthma is exacerbated by the roaches […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,65,72,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-centers-and-institutes","category-institute-for-the-advancement-of-community-health","category-medical-legal-partnership","category-top-four-news-2nd-story"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9587","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\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}