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Our basic premise is that attorneys can intervene to improve the physical, social, and economic environments in which many low-income children live, resulting in their improved health and quality of life.
Such conditions can be health-harming. For example, poor housing conditions, such as the existence of unsanitary conditions or lack of heat, can exacerbate health conditions like asthma, the nation’s most common chronic childhood illness. Poverty can prevent children or their families from obtaining needed medications and other medical treatment. Lack of protection from domestic violence can result in serious injury. Failure to protect the legal rights of developmentally disabled children can lead to their inability to get remedial special education or other needed services.
The Partners
Atlanta Legal Aid Society, Inc.
Representing Atlanta’s poor in civil legal cases since 1924, Atlanta Legal Aid Society assists low-income clients with some of life’s most basic needs: a safe home, enough food to eat, a decent education, protection against fraud, and personal safety. ALAS serves clients in Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett counties.
Priority cases include housing, consumer fraud, public benefits, employment, education, health, spouse abuse, and child-custody cases. Atlanta Legal Aid also represents individuals who are elderly, disabled, mentally ill, or who have AIDS, cancer, or ALS.
Rita A. Sheffey is the executive director of ALAS.
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, one of the leading pediatric healthcare systems in the U.S., is a not-for-profit organization benefitting from the generous philanthropic and volunteer support of our community. The largest Medicaid provider in Georgia, Children’s operates three hospitals with more than half a million patient visits annually. Children’s is recognized nationally for excellence in cancer, cardiac, emergency, neonatal, orthopedic and transplant services, and many other pediatric specialties.
As a service to the community, Children’s provides a free, 24-hour nurse-advice line at 404-250-KIDS, staffed around the clock by certified pediatric nurses.
Dr. Stan Sonu is the medical director for HeLP and child advocacy at Children’s.
GSU College of Law
Georgia State University’s College of Law was established in 1982 in the heart of downtown Atlanta to provide publicly funded legal education. The College offers opportunities to both full- and part-time students through day and evening classes.
GSU’s College of Law strives to provide an excellent and affordable legal education to a diverse student body. The law school is accredited by the American Bar Association.
Leslie Wolf is a professor of law and director of the Center for Law, Health & Society, which oversees the law school’s involvement with the Health Law Partnership.
Our Priorities
#1
Address health-harming legal problems to improve health outcomes for low-income children.
HeLP has physical locations at each of Children’s three hospitals and the Center for Advanced Pediatrics. Examples of the legal support and services the legal team provides include: securing the full state and federal program benefits to which children are entitled, ensuring safe and healthy housing conditions, accessing appropriate educational services, and offering a path to freedom from abuse, neglect, or violence.
#2
Foster knowledge, understanding, and a cooperative spirit between the healthcare and legal professions.
HeLP promotes children’s health through interdisciplinary educational programs, including in-service education for healthcare professionals at Children’s and student education for law students and graduate professional students. The HeLP Legal Services Clinic at Georgia State University’s College of Law, as well as externships and practicum placements, train future lawyers and healthcare professionals to collaborate to improve children’s health, especially those from under-resourced communities.
#3
Improve children’s access to healthcare and the conditions that affect their health.
HeLP executes on a program of legal and policy advocacy at the legislative, policy-making, and government-agency levels. This work focuses on issues such as securing funding through Medicaid and PeachCare for Kids®, expanding health insurance coverage, and other population-based programs designed to improve the overall health and well-being of children. HeLP works with other community groups that can facilitate broad, statewide resolution of access, resource, eligibility, and programmatic issues.
#4
Be a model for effective, interdisciplinary community collaborations that seek to promote public health.
HeLP regularly conducts evaluations of the quality and effectiveness of its various program components to promote internal quality assurance and drive continuous quality improvement. HeLP also undertakes research with IRB-approved protocols to assess the impact that the program has on the hospitals, outcomes of care, and the health and well-being of the children and families served.
DIRECT CONTACT
info@healthlawpartnership.org
Office: 404-785-2005
Fax: 404-705-0010
MAIN OFFICE
Children’s at Scottish Rite
975 Johnson Ferry Road, Suite 360
Atlanta, GA 30342-1600
OTHER LOCATIONS
HeLP at Children’s at Egleston
4th Floor
(near butterfly elevators)
1405 Clifton Road
Atlanta, GA 30322-1060
HeLP at Children’s at Hughes Spalding
3rd Floor Annex
35 Jesse Hill Drive
Atlanta, GA 30303
HeLP at Center for Advanced Pediatrics
1400 Tullie Road
Suite 1408
Atlanta, GA 30303
HeLP Legal Services Clinic
GSU College of Law
85 Park Place, Suite 105
Atlanta, GA 30303
Office: 404-413-9130
Fax: 404-413-9145
For written directions, please click here.