❮ Projects page The Legal Clinic for the Disabled

Spatial Analysis Project:

LCD seeks to create visualizations of the correlations between health status, income status, legal and social needs, and geography of low-income individuals in the Philadelphia region. By combining the substantial quantity of de-identified client data from its five innovative Medical-Legal Partnerships with publicly available data sets on income, employment, household status and other demographic measures, LCD will offer a unique perspective on the role that socio-economic factors have on the well-being of low-income individuals. By analyzing multiple socio-economic factors and social issues, LCD will examine the potential domino effect that issues can create and will tailor efforts and outreach to address compounding issues. Given the interdisciplinary nature of LCD’s work, the analysis will draw upon and help inform elements of public health, legal advocacy, public policy and geographic information systems.

Data available:

LCD will provide de-identified data on thousands of low-income clients in the Philadelphia region. This data includes address, age, disability/health status, and legal need(s). This data will be combined and compared with publicly available data sets from entities such as the U.S. Census Bureau, the Public Utilities Commission, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Philadelphia Department of Health to provide a unique snapshot of the needs of low-income individuals in Philadelphia.

Maps and Reports that will be created:

Examples of products sought:

• combining maps of disability/health status with maps of legal needs to establish correlations
• mapping the relationship between income, health status and food insecurity in Philadelphia neighborhoods
• mapping the relationship between income, health status and utility insecurity in Philadelphia neighborhoods
• combining maps of food insecurity and utility insecurity to examine potential correlation between the issues
• identifying locations for public outreach where unmet legal needs likely exist based on the profiles created from current data

How the maps and reports will be used:

The products will serve as extremely versatile tools for LCD. The maps will inform LCD advocacy and outreach strategy so that we can more efficiently tailor efforts to address the issues that most impact LCD’s clients. LCD will utilize these visualizations to support the value of the Medical-Legal Partnership approach to addressing the social determinants of patient health. LCD, as a nonprofit organization, is completely reliant on foundation and donor support to sustain its programs. As such, the maps will be a powerful tool to help increase awareness about the need for LCD outreach and legal services.