Committee Chair Shelley Hayes and Committee Member Robert Clayton represented the ABA in New Orleans to support, and work with, the Louisiana State Bar Association Foundation’s Louisiana Civil Justice Center and AIDS Law of Louisiana as they provided referrals to free legal services to people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS during Health Recovery Week, January 27 - February 4, 2007. Shelley and Robert also met with local officials to discuss selecting New Orleans as a pilot program location for the Medical Legal Partnership (MLP) Initiative, a collaboration among the Committee, other ABA entities and The Medical-Legal Partnership for Children based at the Boston Medical Center in Boston, Mass.

Health Recovery Week brings together healthcare providers from around the country to provide free medical, dental, optical and behavioral healthcare to uninsured, unemployed and underserved New Orleans residents. This year, volunteer attorneys and law students distributed information about confidentiality and protection from discrimination to people who tested positive for HIV and encouraged them to contact an “HIV Legal Checkup” hotline promptly. Hotline volunteers administered a brief legal needs assessment based on a model checkup questionnaire developed by the Committee and its MLP Subcommittee, to determine the specific legal needs of callers and make appropriate referrals to legal service providers.