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Insights & Solutions

Get the latest trends, tools, and resources for improving healthcare environments here. Browse our many free and members-only resources, including research reports and issue briefs, interviews, case studies, design strategies, lessons learned, key point summaries, and webinars.
    Webinar

    Residential Design for Health and Longevity
    June 2020 ∘ Webinar ∘
    Imagine your home as a place for regeneration and a sanctuary for healing the wounds of the outside world.  It is clean, not cluttered and unmanageable.  It prevents disease and injury and restores you when the inevitable occurs.  It regenerates you on a daily basis, supporting good sleep, encouraging exercise, and making it fun to do healthy cooking.   That’s a lot to ask of a house, but it can be done.  Award winning interior designer, Cynthia Leibrock, presents “Design Details for Health” (the title of her lastest book).  Take a virtual one-hour tour of the designer’s home which has been featured on the cover of The New York Times. 
    Tool

    Dementia-Supportive Environments: Considerations

    March 2020 ∘ Tool ∘
    Understanding the personal abilities and unique challenges faced by aging individuals, especially those living with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, better equips design teams to create supportive care and living spaces. Changes that can be credited to dementia are noticeably different from the changes typical of normal aging, but both can occur at the same time. 
    Design Strategies

    Aging and Dementia Design Strategies

    March 2020 ∘ Design Strategies ∘
    Understanding the personal abilities and unique challenges faced by aging individuals, especially those living with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, better equips design teams to create supportive living spaces. Devising goals that target single symptoms and objectives is not always practical, however, because changes associated with aging, Alzheimer’s disease, and other dementias tend to appear in “clusters” rather than in isolation. The design-based evidence associated with designing supportive memory care settings results in 12 programmatic design strategies.
    Executive Summary

    Memory Care: The Intersection of Aging and Mental Health

    February 2020 ∘ Executive Summary ∘
    Learn about: the personal abilities and unique challenges faced by aging individuals, including those living with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, how thoughtful design can reduce stress associated with declining physical abilities, memory loss, and care provision.
    EDAC Advocate Firm Project

    Spero Academy, Minneapolis, MN
    December 2019 ∘ EDAC Advocate Firm Project ∘
    The primary goal of this project was to apply the evidence-based design process to inform the design of the new school building. The transdisciplinary team evaluated current research pertaining to the student population, conducted focus groups with staff, and planned a formal study to test hypothesized outcomes in the new space compared to the old space.
    Webinar

    Lighting Design for Behavioral Health Environments
    October 2019 ∘ Webinar ∘
     In this webinar, two lighting experts will address innovative behavioral health lighting design strategies, review case studies and current research, and offer how you can adapt lessons learned to provide friendlier environments for residents, staff and families.
    Webinar

    The Medical Behavioral Unit: Enhancing Patient Safety and Experience Through Design
    June 2018 ∘ Webinar ∘
    This webinar explores how the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia pursued a vision to develop a new pediatric patient care unit: one that would meet the requirements and licensure of an acute care unit, but would provide a safe and supportive environment for patients with a comorbid developmental, behavioral, or psychiatric diagnosis. 
    Interview

    The Design of a Psychiatric Clinic in Borås Sweden Strives to Create a "Healing" Environment, an interview with Stefan Lundin and Cristiana Caira
    February 2018 ∘ Interview ∘
    Learn about how the design of a new psychiatric facility strives to normalize mental illness through carefully chosen materials with the goal of creating a “homey,” non-institutional setting, why private patient rooms will be included in the new final building as an important part of the design concept, and how research helped shape the architects’ beliefs that the built environment should support patients’ dignity and independence as part of the recovery process.
    Interview

    Understanding the Unique Design Needs of Behavioral Health Facilities, an interview with James Hunt, AIA, NCARB
    February 2018 ∘ Interview ∘
    Inside you will learn about: why behavioral health facilities have very different design requirements than general hospitals; how different areas of a behavioral health unit have different safety needs that influence design choices; and which types of safety measures and products should be incorporated into behavioral health units.
    EBD Journal Club

    Lighting And Nurses At Medical–Surgical Units: Impact Of Lighting Conditions On Nurses’ Performance And Satisfaction
    July 2017 ∘ EBD Journal Club ∘
     

    Hadi, K., DuBose, J. R., & Ryherd, E. (2016). Lighting and Nurses at Medical–Surgical Units: Impact of Lighting Conditions on Nurses’ Performance and Satisfaction. HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal, 9(3), 17-30.