Our presentation will discuss how NYLAG's LegalHealth medical-legal partnership (MLP) improves the legal and health outcomes for NYC's immigrant communities, including many recent arrivals. As the nation's largest and one of the longest-standing medical-legal partnerships, we have historically rallied around immigrants who are forced to deal with complex legal and health issues. Through our extensive partnerships with various public safety net hospitals, private hospitals and outpatient community clinics, we unite legal care and health care, so the patient relies on one interdisciplinary team to collectively address their legal and health needs. Through LegalHealth's MLP model, our attorneys and paralegals provide culturally competent and trauma-informed wrap around legal services for patients across a wide range of civil legal issues. We fight for health equity and equality for New York's immigrant patient communities by leveraging our expertise in various areas of law, particularly in immigration law, to help patients obtain life-saving transplants, much-needed comprehensive health insurance coverage, and safe hospital discharges. Likewise, we help immigrant families access healthier homes and protect their futures by securing reasonable housing accommodations, obtaining disability waivers for their naturalization applications and representing them in guardianship matters for adults and children. Throughout these various legal processes, our staff regularly collaborates with patients' social workers, community health workers and doctors to obtain important medical evidence, support letters, affidavits and required information. We also provide regular trainings to healthcare professionals on social determinants of health to further build capacity for individual and systemic change, raise consciousness about important public health and legal issues, particularly recent immigration changes, and ignite greater solidarity with impacted immigrant communities. Our panel will highlight our successful pro bono clinics we have built over the past year to enhance outcomes for immigrants with cancer. Specifically, 96 immigrants with cancer and their families have received comprehensive pro bono assistance to legally extend the period of their authorized stay of their tourist visas due to medical necessity and were able to retain control of their decision making, should their illness progress, by assisting in the completion of advance directives. The need is significant and by collaborating with the private bar we have served more immigrant clients and removed social and economic barriers that traditionally have made it challenging for immigrant patients to receive these essential services. Finally, we will share qualitative data from recent years, client narratives and case examples to illustrate how our medical-legal partnership model has positively impacted the legal and health outcomes for immigrant patients. We hope LegalHealth's models for a medical-legal partnership and pro-bono firm collaboration can inspire public health and legal programming for people in different states with similar needs, heighten interest in multidisciplinary information exchange between healthcare and legal systems, and renew commitment to health and racial justice and a healthier society for all.

• Upon completion, participants will be able to understand the structure and benefits of the LegalHealth medical-legal partnership (MLP) model in improving legal and health outcomes for immigrant communities.
• Upon completion, participants will be able to identify effective strategies for integrating legal services into other practices to address complex legal and health issues faced by immigrant populations.
• Upon completion, participants will be able to apply best practices from LegalHealth's culturally competent and trauma-informed legal services to their own legal practices to enhance support for vulnerable clients.
• Upon completion, participants will be able to develop collaborative initiatives and foster partnerships to create interdisciplinary teams that collectively address the legal and health needs of their clients.