By now, maybe you have heard the news that we have a new program name? We are officially Legal Key Partnership for Health and Justice.
How did we get to our new name?
Since we launched more than 30 (!) years ago, our program name has changed several times. Since 2017, we have been known as MLPB, which was shortened from Medical Legal Partnership | Boston. For quite a while now, however, our work has outgrown this label.
We often have said that the “M” in MLPB is silent, since those addressing social drivers of health include far more than medical providers. Community health workers, peer recovery coaches, home visitors, and many more others provide social care from roles beyond traditional medical backgrounds.
The “B” was shortened from Boston to reflect our expanded reach statewide in Massachusetts and into Rhode Island, and occasionally our partnerships have taken us beyond these two states as well.
Given that both the “M” and the “B” no longer captured the essence of our work, in late 2024 we embarked on a process to find a new program name that embodies simply and fully who we are and what we do. And we found that with Legal Key Partnership for Health and Justice.
The word “KEY” has several meanings that resonate with our work today. As a noun, key means something that opens either a literal or metaphorical door. As an adjective, key is used describe something that is important, critical, necessary. And as a verb, key means to take action and use information. So that single word embodies the essence of what we do: we unlock access to essential legal information that is indispensable for health and wellbeing, and help those who are not attorneys understand how to use it.
We are so excited to be entering into our next chapter as an organization as Legal Key!
Our new website is www.legalkeypartnership.org, and our emails have changed as well. We are grateful to our entire staff, advisory board and fiscal sponsor Third Sector New England for their contributions to this transition, and to the good folks at Opus Design for guiding this process.