First, Do No Harm

by Gary Cohen

Paper presented by The Center for Health Design and Health Care Without Harm at a conference sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, September 2006

The challenge intrinsic to healthcare is how to provide high-quality treatment in an ever-changing environment. New science and technological innovations constantly require healthcare providers to transform the way they deliver services. Over the last ten years, the new science linking chemical contaminants in the environment and the incidence of disease has created an additional impetus for the transformation of healthcare practice. This paper explores the implications of this new science linking contaminants and health and discusses the environmental innovations that hospitals are implementing to not only create more optimal conditions for healing in their institutions, but also to prevent disease in the general public.