ABOUT
The Indiana Health Advocacy Coalition (IHAC) is an interdisciplinary non-profit organization that brings dedicated people of diverse professional backgrounds together to enhance comprehensive, patient-centered care in Indiana.
IHAC educates medical and legal providers about social determinants of health and helps coordinate local efforts to address unmet legal needs that may negatively impact people’s health or impede access to care.
SUPPORTING INDIANA'S MLPS
MLP= Medical Legal Partnership
Medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) bring together medical professionals and lawyers to address social causes of health disparities, including access to adequate food, housing and income.
A MEDICAL LEGAL PARTNERSHIP IN INDIANA
About Us:
The Indiana Health Advocacy Coalition (IHAC) is an interdisciplinary 501(c)(3) organization that brings health care providers, lawyers, public health professionals, academics and other advocates together to enhance comprehensive, patient-centered care in Indiana.
Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP) is a health care delivery model that improves the health and wellbeing of low-income and other vulnerable populations (such as children, veterans and the elderly) by addressing unmet legal and social needs and removing legal barriers that impede access to care.
Local MLPs integrate lawyers directly into the health care team so that they may partner with health care providers to deliver comprehensive, patient-centered care in a variety of settings. Classic examples of unmet legal needs that have the potential to adversely impact health include unsafe rental home conditions that result in injury or disease and unjust denials of entitlement program benefits that result in food insecurity or inadequate access to care
TOOLKIT TO GUIDE NEW MEDICAL LEGAL PARTNERSHIPS!
The National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership has published a toolkit that provides the health center community with information and resources to start, strengthen, and sustain a medical-legal partnership (MLP). The toolkit can be used both by health centers new to MLP who want help with the initial planning process and by health centers that are already actively providing legal services, but want help facilitating continuous quality improvement conversations to address issues like low/high referral volumes or funding instability.
MEET THE TEAM
The People of Our Organization
Since our founding in 2000, Indiana Health Advocacy Coalition, Inc. has developed and grown in a positive direction. We’re very proud of the diversity of our staff, and their abilities to contribute their own unique experience and skills to our success. Find out more about some of our team members below.
KERRY HYATT BENNETT, JD
Chief Legal Counsel, ICADV
IHAC Board President
Kerry Hyatt Bennett, JD has been the Chief Legal Counsel at the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence (ICADV) since 2005, and an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis for a decade, specializing in state and federal domestic violence law. Ms. Bennett is a frequent speaker on the legal issues and challenges for survivors of violence in the justice system as a whole, and in society. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions including the Leadership in Law Award from the Indiana Lawyer, the “Woman of Influence” recognition by the Indianapolis Business Journal, the Access to Justice Award from the Muslim Alliance of Indiana, and the Antoinette Dakin Leach Award from the Women in Law Division of the Indianapolis Bar Association, which recognizes trailblazing women lawyers. Ms. Bennett also served as that organization’s president in 2013.
THE MLP WORLD
Our task is to share the amazing work of Medical Legal Partnerships inside and outside of Indiana. Check back for more information!
COMMUNITY HEALTH NETWORK'S MLP
The Community Health Network-Indiana Legal Services, Inc. Medical Legal Partnership (also known as the “MLP”) is a partnership between Community Health Network and Indiana Legal Services, Inc. to provide free, civil legal assistance to patients in Community Health Network’s east and south regions and behavioral health patients residing in Marion County.
The goal of the MLP, which began in June 2017, is to provide individualized legal services to patients in a manner that has a significant, positive impact on health-harming issues such as access to clean and safe housing, access to food, and income maintenance. The mission of the MLP is to help provide stability to individuals and families through the provision of civil legal services.
ESKENAZI HEALTH, INDIANAPOLIS
This service works to improve health outcomes by helping patients manage civil legal issues that affect their health. To request this assistance, patients should contact their nurse, physician or social worker for a referral.
Medical-Legal Partnership offers assistance with:
Housing
Consumer rights
Immigration
Family and stability
Government benefits
Education law
Decision-making
Gender marker changes/name changes
Expungement (setting aside a criminal conviction)
IHAC'S HISTORY
Founded in 2005, IHAC supports a wide variety of organizations, programs and services that believe in addressing social determinants of health in an interdisciplinary and collaborative manner. IHAC has helped coordinate and support the growth of local Medical-Legal Partnerships that seek to address the unmet health-harming legal and social needs of vulnerable populations.
HONORING PAST IHAC BOARD MEMBERS
Rakuya Trice
Kathy Zoppi
Barb Bachmeier
Jay Chaudhary
Ike Willett
Enid Zwirn
Marley Bradley
Priscilla Keith
Joyce Hertko
Anna Kirkman
Adam Mueller
Chad Priest
Suzann Lupton
Mary Chiccarelli
Virginia Caine
Heather McCabe
“One is not always happy when one is good; but one is always good when one is happy”