This is a great piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) written by Patrick Harker, formerly president of the University of Delaware, currently head of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve. Given all that he could write about, it’s wonderful that he would focus on this problem that is so fundamentally important yet so under appreciated. One of the CCJ agencies, Community Legal Aid Society, Inc. (CLASI), has been pairing poverty lawyers with public health nurses and social workers in an effort to address the SDOH of very poor pregnant women.
The Delaware Division of Public Health devotes funding to this upstream intervention, but there are numerous challenges that prevent these medical-legal partnerships from being better supported. Kudos to Dr. Harker for drawing attention to this important problem that could save money, and more importantly, lives.
