HIV/AIDS Law Project

In Alameda County, more than 4,300 people are living with HIV, including over 3,000 living with full-blown AIDS. Recent epidemiological data indicate that the disease is spreading fastest in communities of color, and in particular among women of color. In 1998, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors declared two public health States of Emergency due to the alarming and disproportionate impact of the AIDS epidemic in the African-American community and among injection drug users. The majority of people with HIV/AIDS in Alameda County are very low-income and have a myriad of interconnected legal needs.

In response to the legal needs of low-income people with HIV, the Law Center created the HIV/AIDS Law Project in September 1990. Since then, staff attorneys and students have served thousands of HIV-infected clients with a wide range of legal matters, including benefits advocacy (SSI, SSDI, SDI, MediCal, Medicare), health care access, estate planning (wills and powers of attorney for health care and finances), immigration, family law issues (guardianships, child support), debt relief, and other basic civil legal services. Legal advocacy is aimed at reducing the barriers to life-saving medical care created by poverty, homelessness, inadequate health insurance coverage, lack of legal status and other destabilizing conditions.

In 1997, the Law Center joined the Family Care Network, a multi-agency collaborative providing comprehensive, interdisciplinary services to women, children and families with HIV. In 2003, the HIV Immigration Project was launched to meet the growing need for services among HIV-infected immigrants. The Law Center has also played an active role in local and national HIV policy advocacy, and many former students have gone on to found and direct HIV legal services projects in communities of need.

The East Bay Medical-Legal Partnership

The Health Practice launched the EB-MLP in June 2006 in collaboration with Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland (CHRCO), a designated Level I pediatric trauma center and the largest pediatric critical care facility in the region. The EB-MLP aims to positively impact the health outcomes of local children living in poverty by providing direct legal services to patients and their families, legal advocacy trainings for CHRCO medical providers, and policy advocacy on issues affecting pediatric health.

Through a weekly legal clinic, staff attorneys, volunteer attorneys, and law students conduct intake interviews with referred patient families on-site two days a week at CHRCO’s outpatient primary care clinic. Legal clinic staff works to address issues related to inadequate family income, substandard housing, lack of health insurance, undocumented legal status, and other conditions that adversely affect child health outcomes. Intakes result in a brief service (legal education, counseling and short-term advocacy efforts), the opening of a case file for on-going advocacy, or a facilitated referral to another legal service or social service provider. In addition to direct client service, EB-MLP staff regularly provides legal advocacy trainings for CHRCO medical providers in subjects including immigration, public benefits, housing rights and special education. These trainings help the medical providers become better able to recognize those situations where a patient or patient family should be referred to the EB-MLP legal clinic for assistance.

The EB-MLP broadens the impact of its direct service work by actively participating in the Medical-Legal Bay Area Regional Collaborative (MBARC), a group of Bay Area medical-legal partnerships that have joined forces to identify policy issues affecting pediatric patients’ health, and to develop legislative and/or administrative advocacy strategies that address such issues. By compiling unified client/patient data, the MBARC network is uniquely positioned to advocate for systemic changes to improve child health outcomes regionally and statewide. MBARC participants support one another by sharing training materials and legal resources, promoting best practices, and encouraging the expansion of the MLP service delivery model throughout the state.