Rather than fear of the legal system, patients receiving this service feel supported, listened to, and successful at navigating the next steps.
Holly A. Gaspar, medical-legal partnership program managerDartmouth Health’s medical-legal partnership program has been awarded another two years of funding. Following a successful first two years of the program, the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation and the Couch Family Foundation have committed again to joining with Dartmouth Health in financially sustaining this important program.
Launched in 2021, families eligible for this program must be pregnant or have at least one child under the age of five. A medical-legal partnership focuses on identifying health disparities in communities and addressing individuals’ unmet legal needs related to social conditions, the physical environment or inadequate knowledge of or access to available public benefits. This program help address complex health and social needs, like ensuring emergency access to insurance benefits, preventing employment and education discrimination, and securing housing and preventing unwarranted and illegal evictions. Many people cannot afford legal help to address these complex problems.
“Families are faced with many hardships, impacting their health,” said Holly A. Gaspar, manager of Dartmouth Health’s department of Population Health and medical-legal partnership program manager. “Being able to support one of those barriers, the need for legal intervention, can truly making a lasting impact on their health and the overall health of their family that would otherwise go unmet. Legal services can be expensive, therefore unattainable for many. Rather than fear of the legal system, patients receiving this service feel supported, listened to, and successful at navigating the next steps.”
This effort is a partnership between Dartmouth Health and New Hampshire Legal Assistance (NHLA), bringing collocated civil legal services to several locations.
“Medical-legal partnership is a win-win,” said Sarah Mattson Dustin, executive director of NHLA. “Our healthcare and community partners receive the benefit of dedicated, on-site legal services for the families they are serving, and the innovative model brings NHLA even closer to our clients and communities.”
For more information on the medical-legal partnership program, contact Gaspar at holly.a.gaspar@hitchcock.org.
About Dartmouth Health
Dartmouth Health, New Hampshire’s only academic health system and largest private employer, serves patients across New England. Dartmouth Health provides access to more than 2,300 providers in nearly every area of medicine, delivering care at its flagship hospital, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) in Lebanon, NH. Its network of hospitals, outpatient centers, clinics and home care facilities, spans a broad geographical area. Year after year, DHMC is named the #1 hospital in New Hampshire by U.S. News & World Report, and is consistently recognized for high performance in numerous clinical specialties and procedures. Dartmouth Health includes Dartmouth Cancer Center, northern New England’s only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers and one of less than than 60 total nationally; Dartmouth Health Children’s, which includes the state’s only children’s hospital (Children’s Hospital at DHMC/CHaD) and more than 20 locations around the region; eight member hospitals in Lebanon, Keene, Claremont, Hampstead, and New London, NH, and Windsor and Bennington, VT; Dartmouth Health Home Care; Dartmouth Health Connected Care Center for Telehealth, serving patients as far away as Texas; and more than 30 primary and multi-specialty clinics across New Hampshire and Vermont. Through its partnership with Dartmouth College, Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and the White River Junction VA Medical Center, Dartmouth Health trains nearly 400 medical residents and fellows annually and performs cutting-edge research and clinical trials with international impact. Dartmouth Health and its more than 16,000 employees are committed to serving the healthcare needs of everyone in the communities it serves and to providing every patient with exceptional, state-of-the-art, personalized care. Learn more at dartmouth-health.org.