Class 1: What Is Legal Health?
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1. What is legal health?
Legal health looks at the number and severity of legal problems that someone has.
2. Why does legal health matter?
Poor legal health is common. Over a three year span, nearly 50% of Canadians willexperience an everyday legal problem.
Everyday legal problems involve things like family, housing, wills and incapacity,discrimination, and government benefits.
Everyday legal problems are costly. They can cause relationship breakdown and familyproblems, poor performance at work, housing loss, and emotional and physical healthproblems.
Without intervention, these problems can take a long time to resolve, and problems that startin one area can spread to others. For example, your patient Susan is fired from her job aftera workplace injury. She applies for government disability benefits and is denied. Without anincome, she soon falls behind on her rent and faces eviction.
But this isn't how Susan's story needs to end.
3. Why healthcare providers – like you – are so critical to ensuring good legal health
People will often talk to a trusted helper - like their healthcare provider - about a legalproblem long before they seek professional legal help.
As a healthcare provider, you have a critical role to play in identifying these issues. Legalproblems are deeply intertwined with health outcomes. Benefits to tackling legal healthproblems include fewer hospitalizations, more compliance with treatment plans, moreuptake of preventive care, decreased stress, and improved well-being of patients and medicalstaff.
Access to legal help matters when it comes to resolving legal problems, improving overallhealth, and addressing health inequities.
This course, Prescribing Legal Health, will help you understand what you can do to getpeople the help they need, when they need it, and create meaningful change for people likeSusan.
