How Medical-Legal Partnerships Support Families, Relieve Stress and Improve Health

With a small team of dedicated attorneys working as part of a medical-legal partnership, Lawyers for Kids is making an outsized impact for families at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

A classic example of a medical-legal partnership case is a child with asthma who frequently visits the emergency room. The parents and doctors know the cause is mold in a rented home, but the doctor has limited skills or resources to address the issue with the landlord.

With Lawyers for Kids, clinicians and families have somewhere to turn.

“I’m very proud to be a part of an organization that pays attention not only to the physical and the behavioral health concerns but also to those community factors that we know most definitely impact patient health,” says Cari Stork, MBA, program manager for Lawyers for Kids at Nationwide Children’s.

Lawyers for Kids grew out of The Center for Family Safety and Healing, a nonprofit subsidiary of Nationwide Children’s Hospital that supports adult victims of domestic violence and added a legal component in 2013.

Rhonda J Comer, JD

It wasn’t long after that program launched that Rhonda Comer, JD, senior vice president of Legal Services for Nationwide Children’s, realized the hospital’s families could also benefit from a medical-legal partnership to address health-harming legal needs. Initially, Nationwide Children’s collaborated with Legal Aid of Southeast and Central Ohio, whose lawyers supported cases identified by clinicians, but the needs continued to grow.

“We realized our patients and families needed more legal support because many health issues are linked to underlying legal problems. Having in-house legal advocates join the health care team was the best approach to address the health-harming legal needs and provide critical legal services patients and families wouldn’t otherwise be able to access,” says Comer.

In 2020, Lawyers for Kids was launched hospital-wide, adding hospital-employed attorneys who provide free legal services to patients and their families. Today, Nationwide Children’s is one of only a few hospitals in the country with hospital-employed attorneys. In 2024, Lawyers for Kids supported 2,338 families and continues to expand and add staff in 2025.

While the hospital attorneys handle many cases, partnerships are vital to meeting the needs of families. Lawyers for Kids continues to partner with Legal Aid of Southeast and Central Ohio for those cases that require court representation. They also work with a network of pro bono attorneys from Columbus firms and businesses who are inspired to give back to Nationwide Children’s patients and families.

Low-income Americans have limited free legal resources available to them, leaving most people to navigate complicated situations such as housing, insurance denial, safety and guardianship processes on their own.

“Resources for free legal representation tend to go toward big cases that make an impact versus smaller issues where maybe giving brief advice to families can resolve the problem, which is a lot of what we do,” says Callie Query, JD, managing attorney of Lawyers for Kids.

Research indicates that many legal issues affecting families have a direct impact on child health. Some of these issues include:

• Evictions and unsafe housing conditions
• Medicaid denials for coverage and services
• Financial insecurity due to loss of government benefits
• Legal problems, such as barriers to housing and employment due to criminal records
• Domestic violence and child abuse
• Education issues, such as a lack of special education services and discipline disparities

All of these can be addressed by the Lawyers for Kids team.

“There are things that contribute to what leads children to need the medical care that doctors can’t fix, so this medical-legal partnership allows us to bring some of those additional tools to families,” says Kate McGarvey, an attorney with Legal Aid of Southeast and Central Ohio.

The Lawyers for Kids team provides a range of legal support.

“Not every family needs to file a lawsuit,” says Query. “Sometimes they just need legal advice about their situation or someone on their side to help them advocate with insurance companies.”

To help reach more families who need simple advice or help with paperwork, Lawyers for Kids is piloting a system-wide MyChart change for parents of children who need guardianship at age 18 due to complex medical issues. Parents currently receive a 30-day notice informing them of their impending loss of access to their child’s medical records once the child turns 18. This short notice period can cause issues for families when transitioning to adult care, especially for medically complex children.

Lawyers for Kids added a more detailed 90-day message explaining that parents of a child with a physical or behavioral health concern that requires adult assistance can get help filing for guardianship from Lawyers for Kids. Parents across the Nationwide Children’s system will receive this message starting in September 2025.

A significant early success for the Lawyers for Kids team came after helping a family get insurance approval for durable medical equipment. The family struggled to care for their child at home as the child got older, which led to bedsores that required hospitalization. When Medicaid denied the physician-prescribed equipment, Lawyers for Kids represented the family in a hearing and won. The child wasn’t admitted to the hospital for bed sores after getting the device they needed.

“We have many success stories involving families who assume they can’t appeal an insurance denial. Providing education to families about a different path forward is really empowering,” says Stork.

When a child needed a motorized wheelchair that was denied by the insurance company, a Lawyers for Kids attorney represented the family in a state hearing, securing approval for the $14,000 device.

When it comes to school expulsion hearings, a little help from Lawyers for Kids has made a big impact for families.

“Many times, they’ve experienced trauma and struggle to stay in the classroom, so sometimes we’re just explaining to the school what’s going on with the kid,” says Query.

After one case, Query learned a child she represented received a citizenship award six months later. “Kids are really resilient, and a lot can change pretty quickly,” she says.

It’s not uncommon for legal services to overlap with social work services. In fact, most referrals for Lawyers for Kids come from the Nationwide Children’s social work team.

“Having our team’s support to address the issue so the family can receive the necessary benefit, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Medicaid, that was denied because of an administrative error, is a huge win,” says Stork.

“Social workers have done this work for years, and they make a large impact, but there’s just something about being a lawyer when you call a landlord or a school that gets more attention,” adds Query.

A big part of Lawyers for Kids’ work, outside of providing legal intervention, is education and advocacy.

Many times, families don’t realize they need a lawyer, especially in school-related cases. Instead, families mention the education challenge while visiting Nationwide Children’s for another issue. The physician then contacts the social worker, who refers the case to Lawyers for Kids.

“The hope is that we provide the knowledge for someone to move through their current legal situation and also feel empowered if it comes up in the future,” says Stork.

In a 2021 pre- and post-support questionnaire, Lawyers for Kids clients reported lower perceived stress after the legal intervention.

Lawyers for Kids has also studied zip code utilization to ensure they provide legal services in vulnerable areas. They compared eviction referrals from lower-income zip codes with those from other Franklin County zip codes.

“We received more eviction referrals from higher-risk areas and families were more likely to receive a positive outcome regarding the eviction when linked with Lawyers for Kids for intervention,” says Stork.

Families experience immediate and long-term ripple effects on health outcomes each time the Lawyers for Kids team removes a legal hurdle.

“We do this because it’s the right thing to do and because Nationwide Children’s is committed to population health and health equity. We know the whole community benefits from healthy kids,” says Query.

This article appeared in the 2025 Fall/Winter print issue. Download the issue here.