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"Law is both a social determinant of health and a remedy for addressing health inequalities.” - Professor Dame Hazel Genn, Director, National Strategy for Health Justice Partnership, UCL
What are Health Justice Partnerships?
Health Justice Partnerships are collaborations between health services and organisations specialising in welfare rights. Welfare rights include those relating to benefits, debt, housing, employment, immigration, education and community care. In Health Justice Partnerships, advice on these issues is integrated with patient care. This helps to tackle social and economic circumstances that are strongly harmful to health and are root causes of health inequality.
Health Justice Partnerships exist across the UK. Some are local, covering a small area or single site. Others serve wider counties and regions. They exist in many types of health services, including:
- GP practices
- Hospitals
- Mental health services
- Hospices
- Maternity services
- … and more
They bring together health teams with welfare rights professionals, to address complex individual needs and work towards health equity and social justice.
About us
Our ambition is to stimulate wider action on health inequalities through the law to tackle social determinants of health. We aim to support the development and sustainability of health justice partnerships across the UK and strengthen research and education in the field.
We focus on:
- Developing an engagement strategy to build support for HJPs as a vehicle for improving wellbeing and addressing the social determinants of health.
- Providing advice and support for practitioners through the development of information resources, guidance, learning opportunities, and professional networks.
- Developing professional education programmes to increase awareness and understanding of HJPs, and build the knowledge and capability for interdisciplinary practice.
- Contributing to research and evaluation to strengthen the evidence base, as well as curating and communicating evidence of best practice.
- Strengthening partnerships with existing international collaborators and developing new partnerships.
Our current research projects include:
- We are working with Liverpool John Moores University to evaluate the new Flourish Health and Wellbeing Hub at Victoria Central Health Centre in Wirral.
- We are working with Riverside Advice in Cardiff to support their evaluation of a new partnership with mental health services.
- We contribute to advisory groups to support various ongoing research projects, including: i) the Ministry of Justice evaluation of health justice partnerships in primary care settings; ii) the evaluation of the Healthier Wealthier Families pilot in Tower Hamlets; and iii) the evaluation of the Financial Shield service in Lambeth and Southwark
- We are working with Health Justice Australia and the National Centre for Medical-Legal Partnership in the USA to publish research on health justice partnerships internationally.
- We are working with Barts Health NHS Trust to evaluate the use of legal letters to landlords and housing authorities, to rectify mould and poor housing conditions among asthma patients.
Read about our previous projects over the years on our website.
Our work contributes to a National Strategy for Health Justice Partnership funded by The Legal Education Foundation.