This case study highlights how a health center serving a high immigrant and limited English proficient patient population, including Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, integrated civil legal aid into its services through a medical-legal partnership (MLP) approach in order to address the social determinants of health.

Lessons learned in conducting this case study show that the MLP approach is essential to health care transformation and quality improvement. The approach encourages collaboration between health care providers and legal teams to work together to improve clinic practice and institutional policies to better respond to patients’ needs.