Temple Law Student Selected for Prestigious Independence Foundation Fellowship

December 2, 2011 - Tomas Bednar ’12 has been selected for an Independence Foundation Fellowship.  Bednar will use the Fellowship to establish a medical-legal partnership at the Abramson Cancer Center at Penn Presbyterian.  Working as an employee of the Legal Clinic for the Disabled, Bednar will be on-site at Abramson representing low income individuals with cancer.  He will receive client intake support from Drexel law students and pro-bono attorney support from Dechert LLP.

Medical-Legal Partnerships are premised on a more holistic approach to a patient's well being in which lawyers help patients with various social determinants of health that acute medical care cannot address. By helping clients to resolve some of these social determinants (e.g., the need for public benefits, health insurance, family law issues, advanced directives and estate planning; etc.) lawyers can help to improve their overall quality of life. The lawyer works in tandem with the medical professionals to provide a broader array of services for the patient's benefit.

The Independence Foundation is a private, not-for-profit philanthropic organization serving Philadelphia and its surrounding Pennsylvania counties. The Foundation's mission is to support organizations that provide services to people who do not ordinarily have access to them. Our current funding agenda includes the following areas of interest: Nurse Managed Health Care, Culture and the Arts, Public Interest Legal Services, and Health and Human Services, with special focus on food distribution, housing for the homeless, and services which help people with disabilities to lead independent lives.