Kaiser Permanente is expanding its medical-legal partnership program to bring housing-related legal services to members and communities across seven of its regions.
The regions being expanded with a $1.2 million Kaiser grant include its footprint in Hawaii, the Northwest, Northern California, Southern California, Colorado, Georgia and Mid-Atlantic states.
The program is in partnership with the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership (NCMLP), housed at the Milken Institute School of Public Health, and HealthBegins, a consulting firm helping providers address the social determinants of health.
Together, they estimate they can help prevent evictions for 10,000 community residents and help 4,500 members across Kaiser Permanente healthcare facilities access housing-related legal support by 2025.
The medical-legal partnership initiative was launched by Kaiser, NCMLP and HealthBegins in 2021, and the stated goal was to connect health systems with legal resources for greater housing stability and eviction prevention. It was reportedly the first time a private, national integrated health system invested in medical-legal partnerships at scale.
Medical-legal partnerships embed legal services within the healthcare system, placing attorneys in care teams to identify and address housing challenges. A few studies have shown that these partnerships can improve health and lives of various patient populations.
“We believe that housing is fundamental to good health,” Bechara Choucair, M.D., senior vice president and chief health officer at Kaiser, said in a press release. “Housing instability is also a key driver of health inequities, with people of color and other vulnerable populations experiencing disproportionately high rates of evictions and homelessness.”
At an event announcing the partnership streamed online Thursday, Bethany Hamilton, co-director of NCMLP, noted that COVID-19 demonstrated that having stable housing was critical to health equity. Evidence has shown that eviction and housing displacement increased the spread of the disease and triggered a cycle of poor health and housing instability.
“If you can prevent people from losing their shelter, you can also fight the health crisis they’re seeing,” Hamilton said. “Legal care is healthcare.”
At the event, partners in the program also spoke about the importance of continued investments in communities to keep people housed and called on more cross-sector collaboration to address the homelessness crisis.
Since 2021, the legal aid organizations Kaiser has supported have provided 1,600 Kaiser members and their families, two-thirds of whom are people of color, with access to housing-related legal help. It also helped prevent nearly 10,000 evictions in the communities Kaiser serves.
A brief put together by NCMLP (PDF) cites a study conducted by Bristol Myers Squibb tracking the impact of medical-legal partnerships on veterans at four healthcare organizations in Connecticut and New York. It found that in the first three months, veterans who received full legal representation showed significant reductions in symptoms of hostility, paranoia, psychosis, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. Those who received more help showed greater improvements in housing, substance abuse and mental health than those who received less.