by Kathy Para
JBA Pro Bono Committee Chair
Pro Bono Spotlight Bringing you news of pro bono opportunities and accomplishments.
Two professions that have in the past worked separately to help Jacksonville’s low-income community have now joined forces in the Northeast Florida Legal Medical Partnership (NFMLP) to provide integrated medical-legal services to our area’s low-income and vulnerable populations. The law firm of Holland and Knight, representatives from medical associations, hospitals, law firms, and bar associations met Feb. 2 for a kick-off meeting of the newly formed Steering Committee of the NFMLP.
While medical professionals can many times treat patients’ medical conditions, they cannot always fix the social problems that so often cause or exacerbate these conditions. And while many legal professionals might have trouble diagnosing even a common cold, they are some of the most knowledgeable diagnosticians of and know how to intervene in the social ills and legal issues that plague Jacksonville’s low-income communities. Together, through the Northeast Florida Medical Legal Partnership, these professionals intend to improve the health of many of the most vulnerable children and adults who simply cannot do it by themselves.
NFLMP is part of a nationwide attorney-physician effort born from Boston’s National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership.
“The program in Jacksonville has been in existence for more than eight years. It has been administered and nurtured by the University of Florida College of Medicine-Jacksonville and the Partnership for Child Health and Jacksonville Area Legal Aid,” said Dr. Jeff Goldhagen, the local founding medical champion. “Now with the leadership and participation of Holland & Knight to bring in additional pro bono attorneys, the program has the opportunity to expand services and assist more patient-clients.”
“Like the national organization’s literature says, a family forced to choose between food and heat in the winter months cannot be treated with a prescription,” said Rebecca Feyerick, Jacksonville Area Legal Aid attorney, one of the founders of Jacksonville’s medical-legal partnership. “A person treated for asthma will never be cured so long as he or she has to continue to live in mold-infested housing.”
While a few attorneys and doctors have been chipping away at these problems in Jacksonville, with a new grant from the Florida Bar Foundation and the leadership of Holland & Knight, the Northeast Florida Medical Legal Partnership will be able to expand services to more Jacksonville-area patients as well as to begin to build a program that can be duplicated statewide. An important step in this expanded initiative was the meeting of the newly formed steering committee at the law offices of Holland & Knight Tuesday night. Approximately 25 medical and legal professionals were introduced to the accomplishments of the NFMLP to date, the need for this effort in our community, the goals for expansion of services, the responsibilities of the Steering Committee members, the methods of collaboration of members of the medical and legal communities, and the short- and long-term goals of the project.
The members present were Teri Coutu, Area Health Education Consortium; Hank Coxe, Bedell, Dittmar, DeVault, Pillans, and Coxe; Leslie Jean-Bart, D.W. Perkins Bar Association; Jay Millson, Duval County Medical Society; Karen Millard, Florida Coastal School of Law; Donny MacKenzie and Buddy Schulz, Holland & Knight; Ray Driver, Driver, McAfee; Peck, and Hawthorne and The Jacksonville Bar Association; Hugh Cotney, Frances Pullins, Michael Figgins, Rebecca Feyerick, and Kathy Para, Jacksonville Area Legal Aid; Floyd Willis, Mayo Clinic; Bob Threlkel, Partnership for Child Health; Rogers Cain, Northeast Florida Medical Society; Fred Franklin, Rogers Towers; Mary Robinson, I.M. Sulzbacher Center for the Homeless; Charles Caniff, Shands Jacksonville; David Wood, Jack Kilkenny, and Jeff Goldhagen, University of Florida; Sheila Meehan and Adrianne Davis, Florida Legal Services.
Steering committee members unable to attend include Renee Harrell, Harrell and Harrell, Howard Watts, St. Vincent’s Hospital; James Wood, Memorial Hospital; and Jose Zayas, Wolfson/Baptist Hospital.
The Medical-Legal Partnership for Children was founded in 1993 by Dr. Barry Zuckerman as a local program serving patient-families at Boston Medical Center and affiliated health centers. A staunch advocate for children, Dr. Zuckerman nevertheless found that his skills as a doctor were insufficient to keep his low-income pediatric patients healthy. His innovation – bringing poverty lawyers into the medical setting to help families – led to dozens of like-minded doctors and lawyers establishing medical-legal partnerships in their communities.
In April 2006, MLPC launched its National Center to support the transformation of health care and legal service delivery through the expansion, advancement, and integration of the medical-legal partnership model. Since 2006, the National Center has provided technical assistance to partnership sites, facilitated the MLP Network, and coordinated national research and policy activities related to preventive law, health disparities, and the social determinants of health.
Anyone interested in more information about the national Medical-Legal Partnership effort can go to medical-legal partnership.org.
Local attorneys or medical professionals interested in helping the NFMLP mission can contact Kathy Para at [email protected], 356-8371, ext. 363.