Professor Medha D. Makhlouf coauthors article with Jamelia Graham ‘25 and Penn State College of Medicine faculty

CARLISLE, Pa.—Professor Medha D. Makhlouf recently published a coauthored, open-access article titled “Merging Law and Medicine: Patient Attitudes About and Experiences with Social Needs Screening and Medical-Legal Partnerships in Primary Care” in the Journal of Primary Care & Community Health. The lead author of the study is Jamelia D. Graham ’25, who also earned a Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) from Penn State College of Medicine. Graham currently serves as the Martin Luther King Jr. Fellow at the Pennsylvania Health Law Project.

The article presented the results of a research study on how patients feel when they are asked about social needs and offered legal services through a medical-legal partnership (MLP) during medical appointments. The study found that patients generally had positive impressions of both social needs screening and MLPs. It concluded that establishing MLPs in rural areas may help to address social determinants of health in those communities. It also proposed a need for additional research on how to build trust in legal representatives in communities with negative experiences with the justice system. The article contributes to the growing scholarly literature evaluating the effectiveness of MLPs.

The article’s other coauthors, like Makhlouf, served as members of Graham’s doctoral candidate committee. In this role, they provided guidance and feedback on her research process and dissertation draft over the five years of the joint degree program. As the advisor to the JD-DrPH joint degree program, Makhlouf worked closely with Graham during this period to map out her course progression and select courses at the Law School that would count toward the DrPH degree. This included several courses taught by Makhlouf, including the Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic, Public Health Law, and Health Justice Seminar.

Professor Medha D. Makhlouf is the Elsie de R. and Samuel P. Orlando Distinguished Professor and founding director of the Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic at Penn State Dickinson Law. She has a joint appointment in the Department of Public Health Sciences at Penn State College of Medicine. Professor Makhlouf’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of health law, immigrants’ rights, and poverty law and policy. Her recent scholarship has been published in the Boston University Law Review, New York University Law Review, and the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law & Ethics. Professor Makhlouf is currently writing a book, tentatively titled Health Justice for Migrants, which is under contract with Cambridge University Press.