Our Mission

OPOC connects Boston’s public defenders with medical providers who can write objective, rigorous medical affidavits on behalf of their clients. After arranging the pairing, OPOC remains available to paired-up medical providers and attorneys to support their advocacy process.

OPOC also facilitates trainings with both attorneys and medical providers regarding the particularities of medical affidavit writing and medical-legal collaborations more generally. Our hope is to increase the rate at which and persuasiveness with which individual defendant’s medical issues are being presented to various decision-makers in the court system. In certain cases, medical issues have been found by courts to be one factor relevant to a fair and proper resolution of the criminal case. The role of the OPOC affidavit is to explain the medical issues clearly and objectively.

We recognize that many of the same inequities affect both the health system and the criminal system. Case by case, collaboration by collaboration, our work is intended to address those inequities. Grown out of the COVID crisis, this project recognizes our interconnectedness and seeks to address a gap in care, especially for those most vulnerable community members.

Hear from David Sanchez A former Brigham resident & current allergy immunology fellow at Mount Sinai & Co-Founder of OPOC.

OPOC's Medical Leadership Team at Brigham & Women's Hospital 

  • "During COVID, a medical affidavit helped save my client's life. The affidavit explained his acute health issues for all of us in the courtroom. And it explained them with the clarity that only a medical professional could bring. This collaboration is working."

    - Cristina Rodrigues, public defender and OPOC co-founder 

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Our History

OPOC was founded in 2020 as a collaboration between the Diversity & Inclusion Committee at Brigham and Women’s Hospital Internal Medicine Residency and public defenders in the City of Boston.

Since then, OPOC has accumulated a wide network of clinician volunteers. We have coordinated upwards of 40 affidavits for clients in Boston.

OPOC is now housed within the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. We maintain meaningful ties to the Internal Medicine Residency, which remains a key source of volunteers for the program.