Across the United States, millions of farmworkers engage in difficult and skilled labor to put food on our tables.1 However, despite the essential labor they provide, they are not treated that way. Many farmworkers have incomes below the federal poverty level and struggle with housing insecurity, food insecurity, and lack of access to other critical resources and supports that influence health.2 These factors, also known as social determinants of health (SDOH), "are the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks."3 Farmworkers are particularly impacted by the SDOH because of structural and systemic exclusion.4 Community-based farmworker clinics are essential resources for farmworkers to address health needs and access services. However, in order address and begin to rectify the environmental factors that are at the root of health and wellness issues, often legal intervention can be the missing piece. Legal service providers can be inaccessible to farmworkers. Strategic and embedded collaboration between medical and legal advocates in the form of a Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP) can be an invaluable tool for addressing SDOH and supporting farmworker families. MLPs are structural and integrated interventions, embedding lawyers into a healthcare setting to collaborate with the care team to address structural problems at the root of health inequities.5 Embedded lawyers work with the health care team to address individual patient's immediate social needs as well as to identify patterns and develop upstream strategies to address SDOH.6 MLPs can be an important tool to "improve outcomes for systemically and structurally excluded populations."7 In this session, participants will learn about a Farmworker MLP started two years ago by Central West Justice Center's Seasonal and Migrant Farmworker Unit in collaboration with "La Cliniquita" a farmworker clinic at the Baystate Brightwood Health Center in Springfield Massachusetts. This MLP is based on guidance from patients, community health workers, the workers center, and other community organizations. The partnership embeds a lawyer into the healthcare team to help patients with health harming legal needs, lead trainings for patients and providers, and advocate for policy change to eliminate systemic inequities at the state level. In this session we will share the model we have developed and explore the challenges, successes, and takeaways from our experience. Participants will engage in conversations about how embedding legal services within community-based farmworker medical clinics can help eliminate barriers for farmworkers and will leave with a model and key takeaways to help them think about how an MLP or similar partnership could be implemented in their own states and communities.

 Citations: 1) See Daniel Costa, How many farmworkers are employed in the United States, ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE BLOG, (October 3, 2023), https://www.epi.org/blog/how-many-farmworkers-are-employed-in-the-united-states/. 2) See generally Sarah Goldman, et al., Essential and in Crisis: A Review of the Public Health Threats Facing Farmworkers in the U.S., JOHN HOPKINS CENTER FOR A LIVABLE FUTURE, (May 2021), https://clf.jhsph.edu/sites/default/files/2021-05/essential-and-in-_crisis-a-review-of-the-public-health-threats-facing-farmworkers-in-the-us.pdf. 3) U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, OFFICE OF DISEASE PREVENTION AND HEALTH PROMOTION, Healthy People 2030: Social Determinants of Health, https://health.gov/healthypeople/priority-areas/social-determinants-health, (last accessed May 29, 2024). 4) Goldman, supra note 2. 5) See generally NATIONAL CENTER FOR MEDICAL LEGAL PARTNERSHIPS, https://medical-legalpartnership.org/, (last accessed May 29, 2024). 6) Kate Marple, et al., Health Center MLP planning, implementation and practice guide: Bringing Lawyers onto the health center care team to promote patient & community health, NATIONAL CENTER FOR MEDICAL LEGAL PARTNERSHIPS (October 2020), at 5-7, https://medical-legalpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Health-Center-MLP-Toolkit-FINAL.pdf. 7) NATIONAL CENTER FOR MEDICAL LEGAL PARTNERSHIPS and Omar Martinez, Webinar Presentation, Best Practices for Screening and Data Collection for MLP's Serving Immigrant Populations: Advancing the Science of MLPs Serving Diverse Immigrant Populations, https://medical-legalpartnersh... (last accessed May 29, 2024).

• describe what a medical legal partnership (MLP) is and outline a model that an MLP can follow.
• describe the importance of taking the lead from patients, the care team, and community members when developing a partnership like an MLP, and/or when conducting more effective outreach.
• explain the social determinants of health that farmworkers face and reflect on the health harming needs that farmworkers in their own states and communities experience.
• design and implement an embedded community partnership, like an MLP, or improve upon one that is already in place based on the strategies shared among advocates during the session.