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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sociol.
Sec. Gender, Sex and Sexualities
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2024.1422783
This article is part of the Research Topic Gender, Sexuality, and Well-Being: Impact on Well-Being Due to Gender and Sexual Orientation-Based Discrimination View all articles

Medical-Legal Partnerships: A Promising Approach for Addressing Health-harming Legal Needs Among People with HIV

Provisionally accepted
Julia Jaen Julia Jaen 1Anne Frankel Anne Frankel 1Ashley French Ashley French 2Robin Davison Robin Davison 2Miguel Munoz-Laboy Miguel Munoz-Laboy 3Omar Martinez Omar Martinez 2*
  • 1 College of Public Health, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
  • 2 College of Medicine, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, United States
  • 3 School of Social Welfare, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    People with HIV (PWH), particularly those at the intersection of sexual and gender identities, face enduring obstacles to accessing HIV care, including structural stigma, structural racism and discrimination, housing instability, and limited access to health insurance. To address these challenges, Medical-Legal Partnerships (MLPs) in HIV care offer an innovative approach that integrates medical and legal services. By targeting health-harming legal needs (HHLN), MLPs aim to enhance the HIV care continuum outcomes for PWH. This study examines the benefits and challenges of MLPs within organizations serving PWH through the social-ecological model. MLP providers (n=111) identified organizational-level challenges such as funding limitations, resource integration issues, and staffing constraints. MLPs demonstrated numerous benefits, including patient impact and benefits, comprehensive service provision, enhanced staff support and capacity, and potential for policy influence. These results underscore the feasibility of MLPs while offering valuable insights into their efficacy and challenges, guiding the implementation of MLPs to address health-harming legal needs, including discrimination, and thereby improving HIV care outcomes.

    Keywords: HIV care, Medical-legal partnerships, health-harming legal needs, structural racism and discrimination, Social-ecological model

    Received: 24 Apr 2024; Accepted: 25 Jun 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Jaen, Frankel, French, Davison, Munoz-Laboy and Martinez. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Omar Martinez, College of Medicine, University of Central Florida, Orlando, 32827, Florida, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.