Crozer-Keystone Healthy Start, part of Women and Children’s
Health Services, recently received a one-year, $166,000 grant from the Health
Resources and Services Administration to create a unique medical-legal
partnership in conjunction with the Widener University School of Law. The grant
will be used to help program participants obtain free legal assistance,
allowing them to have more time to care for their children and maintain healthy
lifestyles.

Based at Community Hospital in Chester, Crozer-Keystone
Healthy Start provides a range of case management, health education and
outreach to women who are pregnant or who have children under 2 years old. The
grant will be used to train Women and Children’s Health Services staff to
conduct legal needs assessments when they first connect with a client, to
identify legal needs and to make appropriate referrals to the legal component.

The grant will fund the legal team, which will consist of a full-time attorney
as well as nine Widener students from the School of Law as well as graduate and
undergraduate students with social work, public health, psychology and nursing
concentrations. Two of the students have Spanish-language skills that will
benefit client outreach efforts. The project will also collect data to measure
the impact of their efforts.

Women and Children’s Health Services’ flagship program is
Crozer-Keystone Healthy Start, which provides hands-on medical and social
service assistance for women and families in need. Healthy Start is free for
pregnant women and children younger than 24 months old who meet certain income
limitations and live in Chester, Chichester, Eddystone, Woodlyn, Parkside,
Upland, Toby Farms, Chester Township, Trainer, Marcus Hook or Linwood.

“The idea
behind this program is that we have found that many of our participants have
legal problems that literally affect their health and well-being. Our program
participants often do not have the resources to manage these issues, or they are
unaware of resources that are available to them. When they have to deal with
these legal issues themselves, they do not have as much time to take care of
themselves or their children,” says Joanne Craig, director of Women and
Children’s health Services.

In the primary service area of Crozer-Keystone Healthy
Start, almost one-third of the service area residents live in poverty and over
half live under 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Line, according to data from
the Public Health Management Corporation. A 2009 Widener School of Law legal
needs assessment of Crozer-Chester Medical Center’s outpatient pediatric
patients also revealed that patients in the same service areas have a range of
legal needs. The survey found that low-income pediatric patients and their
families experienced serious problems with public benefits, housing, health
insurance and other issues that affect their health.

The grant will expand on an existing partnership between
Crozer-Keystone and Widener. In 2010, Widener operated a medical-legal
partnership serving patients in the outpatient Crozer-Keystone Health Network
pediatric practice based at Crozer as well as two Ches Penn Health Services
sites (ChesPenn has a management agreement with Crozer-Keystone).

In just six months, Widener opened 48 cases, benefiting over
100 people. Among its many successes include preserving electric service for a
woman who owed more than $1,000 to the utility company; helping homeless
families find housing; and overturning the denial of Medicaid funding for the
daycare of a medically fragile childe so that the mother could continue school.
Perhaps more importantly, 84 percent of clients participating in post-service
evaluation reported a decrease in stress and an increase in the quality of
their sleep following these services.

All Healthy Start program participants will be eligible for
the services provided by this new legal component. There will be no charge for
the services. Legal services will be tailored for the Healthy Start
participant, delivered in a culturally appropriate manner. Legal staff will
receive assistance with outreach and cultural sensitivity with Hispanic and
African American clients by Widener advanced Spanish students as well as CKHS
staff members, many of whom are from the service area.

Supervision of the legal component staff will be conducted
by Dan Atkins, a lawyer with more than 20 years of experience in poverty and
disability law who is a member of the Widener Law adjunct faculty. Atkins will
be supported at Widener by Professor John G. Culhane, director of the school’s Health
Law Institute, who has expertise in public health law.

“Healthy Start has had measurable – and remarkable – impacts
on the health outcomes for at-risk babies and their mothers, in large part because
Joann Craig and her able staff understand the complexity of the problems their
target population presents,” Culhane says. “With this generous grant, Widener
Law and the Health Law Institute will be able to supply an important, but often
overlooked, piece of the full health care puzzle. Solving the legal problems of
the indigent can and does contribute to better health outcomes.”

Pre- and post-training evaluations will measure the impact
of training on staff members to identify and refer legal needs. The program
will retain Thomas Jefferson’s School of Population Health so that evaluation
tools and methods will be scientifically sound.

In addition to Healthy Start, Women and Children’s Health
Services oversees the Nurse-Family Partnership; the Children’s Health
Connection Reminder Program; Cribs for Kids; and the Hispanic Resource Center.