Medical Advocacy
Medical Advocacy Coordinators work with area medical facilities (hospitals and clinics) to provide crisis intervention, educational resources, support, and training regarding domestic violence (DV) to medical providers.
The Medical Advocacy Program (MAP) acts as a liaison between WC&S and the Allegheny County medical community, linking WC&S clients to medical systems as well as providing support and education to providers in local medical systems.
For healthcare providers, MAP responds to requests for on-site or phone crisis intervention for patients. They also provide educational consultations and technical support to healthcare providers for individual DV cases and promote DV awareness. This improves the providers’ response in DV cases and enables universal DV screening for all patients.
For WC&S shelter and nonresident clients, the Medical Advocacy Coordinator provides health support as requested, using an up-to-date list of medical providers and facilities. This ensures that emotional needs, information, and resources are available for DV survivors and patients within the healthcare system, if they choose to use them. The Coordinator can also help survivors access medical insurance.
Within the local medical community, the Coordinator provides DV education to the medical community, including physicians, medical students and residents, nurses and nursing students, researchers, allied health workers, and students. The Coordinator collaborates with medical facilities and community agencies and systems to raise awareness of WC&S’ services and to ensure survivors’ interests and needs are represented within hospital policies and systems.
