The National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership (NCMLP) is a project of the Department of Health Policy in the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University. NCMLP’s mission is to mainstream an integrated, medical-legal partnership approach to health and healthcare of individuals and populations. Medical-legal partnership (MLP) leverages the expertise of healthcare, public health, and legal professionals to jointly respond to the social and legal needs of patients, clinics, and populations. MLP seeks to transform the healthcare system’s response to the social determinants of health, many of which can be traced to laws that are not uniformly or fairly applied or that are under-enforced. MLP helps to bridge the divide between the civil legal aid and health and public health communities by training healthcare, public health, and legal teams to work collaboratively to address the needs of vulnerable individuals and populations. MLP also works to treat individual patients’ health- harming social and legal needs, transform clinic practice and institutional policies that seek to respond to social and legal needs of patients. NCMLP convenes national partners and local practitioners in the health, public health, and legal fields to integrate the MLP approach. Integrating this approach involves shifting the focus of health and legal practices from individuals to populations, building and informing an evidence base to support the MLP approach, and transforming inter-professional education and training to emphasize the MLP approach.

NCMLP was incubated at Boston Medical Center for seven years before moving to George Washington University in 2013. NCMLP currently works with 135 hospitals, 127 health centers, 32 medical schools, 127 legal aid agencies, 46 law schools, and 70 prop bono law firms and corporate legal departments, all of which integrate the MLP approach into their work. The Kresge Foundation and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have been key funders in supporting the growth of NCMLP. In 2015, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provided resources for NCMLP to undergo sustainability planning to ensure the long-term growth of the organization. At the time, NCMLP’s revenue consisted of 40% philanthropy, 40% government funding, and 20% contract-based fees.

Impact Catalysts (as its predecessor firm, Root Cause) worked with NCMLP to pressure test the sustainability of its current streams of funding as well as identify new potential revenue streams to drive sustainability and growth. We partnered with NCMLP to develop a strategic approach to positioning itself in the broader field, identifying the opportunities and challenges posed by both competitors and potential partners, as well as developing communication tools that it now uses to demonstrate its impact and opportunities to invest in its future success.