Keeping the Heat on for Children's Health: A Successful Medical-Legal Partnership Initiative to Prevent Utility Shutoffs in Vulnerable Children.

Objective: Energy insecurity may result in adverse consequences for children's health, particularly for children with special health needs or chronic health conditions. We aimed to determine whether a multimodal intervention addressing energy insecurity within the framework of a medical-legal partnership (MLP) resulted in an increase in the provision of certifications of medical need for utility coverage in an inner city academic primary care practice.

Methods: Working within a medical-legal partnership, we standardized criteria for providers approving medical need utility certification requests.