Washington, DC | BUILD 2.0 & 3.0 | 2017-2022
Southeast DC has a long history as a center of Black life in the nation’s capitol. It includes many neighborhoods with a diverse mix of housing as well as nonprofits, art and cultural centers, and green spaces. It is also a place where parents and community partner organizations are collaborating in a unique way to lead a series of unprecedented changes in how doctors, lawyers, and health insurance plans are working to ensure children in these neighborhoods are healthy and thriving.
“We’re providing individual legal services to each parent and caregiver, but this is about community leadership and voice and contributions. I think that we are now doing things differently at Children’s Law Center.”
Tracy Goodman, Children’s Law Center
Healthy Together: Cross-Sector Collaboration Fuels Impact
It all started with the Healthy Together Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP) between Children’s National Hospital and Children’s Law Center (CLC), which had been helping patients’ families with legal support since 2002. After receiving an award from The BUILD Health Challenge® (BUILD) in its second cohort, the cross-sector collaboration called BUILD Health DC expanded to engage parents from Southeast DC and the local public health department.
Tracy Goodman, Director of Healthy Together at CLC, shares the benefit of integrating lawyers into pediatric treatment teams at clinics in Southeast DC: “It’s a great way for families to not only get their pediatric healthcare, but also if they have a legal need, being able to be connected on the spot with a lawyer.”
From 2017-2019, the BUILD award enabled CLC’s legal services to focus on helping families get a resolution to their housing conditions such as mold or rodent infestations — issues that were negatively impacting their kids’ asthma.
Listening to Parents Leads to Change
The BUILD Health DC collaborative conducted a series of community focus groups that revealed families’ desire for more trust and direct engagement from the lawyers. This feedback led to changes in CLC’s protocols such as lawyers visiting homes to see the housing conditions firsthand and the creation of a vital family outreach worker position to support families more holistically with a range of social needs, significantly reducing the likelihood of lawyers losing contact with a family during protracted legal proceedings. By taking steps to build trust with the families it serves, CLC has been able to achieve more positive legal outcomes, which in turn has increased health impacts and lowered the cost of treating kids’ asthma in Southeast DC.
And that’s when health plans, such as AmeriHealth Caritas DC, took notice.
“When someone doesn’t have to take their child to an ER, that unnecessary cost is removed from the health care system, and that is really a business case for having a lawyer as part of the healthcare team.”
Karen Dale, AmeriHealth Caritas DC
BUILD provided support for a financial analysis, which confirmed the cost savings. When the Medical-Legal Partnership successfully intervened in cases of unhealthy housing affecting children’s asthma, government-funded healthcare costs, such as asthma-related emergency room visits or hospitalizations, were reduced by an average of $10,000 over 18 months. The data became the foundation for a first-of-its-kind contract between a legal service organization and managed care organization. Now, every time CLC represents a child with AmeriHealth insurance in a case that leads to improved health outcomes and cost avoidance, AmeriHealth pays CLC a portion of those savings. This landmark agreement has ensured a new and sustainable funding stream for legal services as a preventative health measure.
Powerful Parent Voices Foster Resilience
Building on the foundation of the cross-sector partnership and powerful parent voices during BUILD’s second cohort, the collaborative applied to be part of BUILD’s third cohort as well. They turned their attention to mitigating the effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), which can negatively impact health outcomes, through an approach that strengthens parents’ resilience rather than focusing on the trauma. In partnership with the Early Childhood Innovation Network (ECIN), they set up Parent Cafés — originally designed to be in-person but moved online due to COVID — vital, peer-led safe spaces for parents to connect. Parents and caregivers — those with kids facing adverse experiences or who themselves had faced adverse experiences in their own childhoods — shared experiences and built support networks during a time of immense isolation and stress, which can further exacerbate mental and physical health challenges.
“We had parents involved in almost all of our meetings, designing our strategy, figuring out what we were going to do…we have learned the value of parent leadership.”
Dr. Nia Bodrick, Children’s National / Early Childhood Innovation Network
The Parent Café model has extended its reach, far beyond the initial support from BUILD. Spearheaded by parent leaders, the ECIN Parent Café training hub has enabled hundreds of community members to become facilitators themselves, creating a sustainable network of peer support across DC.
Shared Goals and Power Shifts in the Nation’s Capital
BUILD not only provided financial support but also a structured framework for cross-sector collaboration. This collaborative spirit extended to meaningful parent leadership, with parents actively involved in every stage of the work, from identifying priorities to co-designing and co-leading training workshops.
For CLC, having both a parent advisory council and the creation of a Family Outreach Worker position — initially funded by BUILD — have been invaluable to the organization’s impact. The Family Outreach Worker is now a permanent position and the organization continues to tap into parent and client-centered advisory groups to support its decision-making.
None of the shifts in how the partners involved provide medical and legal services would have been possible without deeply listening to parents who are raising their children in Southeast DC — parents who, historically, have had very little power to shape the way that lawyers, doctors, and health plans meet their children’s needs. From demonstrating the economic value of legal interventions in healthcare to empowering parents as leaders and building sustainable support networks, the BUILD Health partners have fostered equity and resilience for children and families in the nation’s capital.
“We increasingly created opportunities for parents to lead and sustain our work. Parents served as equal collaborators and full decision-making partners.”
Tracy Goodman, Children’s Law Center
This update on the BUILD partnership in Washington, DC is part of an unfolding series in honor of BUILD’s tenth anniversary. Learn more about their earlier work here and here.
Explore more learnings, stories, and impact from ten years of building together.
