Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County (NLSLA)

Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County (NLSLA) is one of California's leading public interest law firms having served Los Angeles' impoverished communities for more than 50 years. NLSLA provides free legal services on those legal matters which most impact the poor: housing, immigration, employment, family law and domestic violence, public benefits, access to the courts and health care via its Health Consumer Center.

NLSLA's Health Consumer Center (HCC) has been a statewide leader and significant contributor to the design and implementation of the Affordable Care Act in California. At the County level, it strives to bring to fruition the promise of health care for all. HCC provides direct assistance to tens of thousands of county residents seeking to access health care, educates the community about their rights and works collaboratively with the community and the County to improve and transform the delivery of health care in Los Angeles. Through these efforts NLSLA advocates have become expert in the delivery of comprehensive and effective health services to the County's low-income residents.

One of NLSLA's significant advocacy projects is in Boyle Heights, where NLSLA operates a Medical Legal Community Partnership (MLCP) at The Wellness Center. At this MLCP, NLSLA reaches LAC+USC patients, The Wellness Center visitors, and neighboring communities, focusing primarily on health and benefits information and advocacy. This includes resolving eligibility problems for healthcare programs like Medi-Cal and Covered California, advocating for consumers who are being denied medically necessary services, giving consumers the tools to address their medical debt, and informing consumers about other programs like CalFresh and My Health LA.

One of the most common difficulties faced by consumers coming to NLSLA's MLCP at The Wellness Center is dealing with medical debt. There are many causes of medical debt including billing errors, being underinsured, or obtaining services out of network. Unsurprisingly, one of the most common causes is simply being uninsured. With a typical emergency room visit easily costing thousands of dollars, being uninsured can financially devastate already vulnerable families. Through its Medical Debt Clinic, NLSLA gives consumers the information and tools needed to resolve their medical debt problems and to ensure that they enroll into health coverage moving forward.

In addition to the financial cost and burden, being uninsured often prevents consumers from seeking the preventative care needed to avoid more serious conditions later on. Even though the Affordable Care Act along with other policy changes in Los Angeles brought coverage to more residents, many still remain without coverage. One of NLSLA's most important goals is to connect uninsured persons to healthcare programs like Medi-Cal, Covered California, and My Health LA.

Recognizing the importance of healthcare access, NLSLA is a member of the Building Healthy Communities Boyle Heights collaborative and co-chair of the Health Happens with Prevention (HHP) workgroup. NLSLA's role is to train and advise the HHP. The HHP workgroup, per the vision of the group and the community it represents, works to bring healthcare access to all Boyle Heights residents by creating an organized constituency focused on ensuring access to health care for all and in particular, the continued success of My Health LA. Among its early successes, the HHP workgroup through a pilot project with the LA County Department of Health Services, led screening and enrollment events at Resurrection Church in Boyle Heights where over one thousand area residents were presented with the opportunity to be screened and enrolled into health coverage. Many took advantage of this opportunity and were screened and enrolled into My Health LA, Medi-cal, Covered California and CalFresh. Most importantly, families shared that were it not for this enrollment event occurring at their local community church, they would not have signed up for coverage.

Through its Health Consumer Center, Medical Legal Community Partnership at The Wellness Center, and its leadership in the Building Health Communities Boyle Heights collaborative, NLSLA will continue to advocate for quality healthcare access for all LA County residents.