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Insights & Solutions

Tool
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
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
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.

Webinar
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.

Interview
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
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.

Design Strategies
November 2016 Design Strategies

Aging often involves a multitude of changing needs and priorities. However, there are human needs and desires that remain constant throughout the life course. Design strategies for aging must not only address basic physiological and safety needs, but attend to higher-level human needs as well. The universal design approach is being adopted by many forward-thinking designers who aim to support equitable, flexible, and accessible environments for all users.

 

Tool
June 2018 Tool

Healthcare is provided in a variety of settings, from a person’s home to outpatient clinics, to the hospital. While the settings and specific design elements may differ across the continuum of care, the objectives of safety, efficiency, satisfaction, and high quality care remain constant. This set of interactive diagrams provides a link between the evidence base, design strategies, and desired outcomes – in a visually intuitive and actionable format.

EDAC Advocate Firm Project
September 2012 EDAC Advocate Firm Project

The goal for this project was to establish the first separately licensed children’s hospital in the community of El Paso, Texas with an interior environment that is patient-centered, family focused, community accessible, culturally compatible and a magnet for the recruitment of pediatric medical staff.  

EDAC Advocate Firm Project
September 2012 EDAC Advocate Firm Project

The goal for this project was to have the interdisciplinary design team pursue the creation of a total environment of care with the following objectives: reduce patient and visitor stress, reduce wait times and improve flow, improve staff sightlines both for security as well as clinical care, and capture natural light and views of nature at an urban edge.