Event: Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics, Organizational Ethics Consortium
Title: If Architecture Influences Health Outcomes, How Should Healthcare Systems Respond? Bioethics at the Frontier of the Science of Design
Date: January 20, 2023
To register for the event or for more information click HERE.
Event: University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center Ethics Grand Rounds
Title: Exploring the Untapped Nexus of Ethics and Health Facility Design
Date: January 10, 2023
Architecture inherently reflects the normative preferences of its time. This certainly applies to healthcare architecture, where design concepts have intentional and decades-long effects on patients, families, and staff. Employing healthcare architecture to alter behaviors, mediate interpersonal interactions, and affect patient outcomes make it an ethical matter. We propose that advances in design science and our understanding of its powerful effects warrant a shift how we think about space, and that the built environment in health care is analogous to a medical intervention. As such, all responsible stakeholders should openly discuss and thoroughly scrutinize the intentional use of the built environment to affect perceptions and change behaviors of patients, residents to a similar standard as conventional medical therapies. We highlight prominent examples of such architectural interventions, analyze their implementation, and offer perspective on how medicine and architecture can create ethically responsible spaces.
Read more about the ethical aspects of healthcare facility design HERE.
Journal Club Title: Built Environment Design Interventions at the Exits of Secured Dementia Care Units: A Review of the Empirical Literature
Journal Club Date: December 8, 2022
Moderator: Addie M Abushousheh, PhD, EDAC, Assoc AIA
Discussant: Diana Anderson, MD, M.Arch
Organization: The Center for Health Design
The EBD Journal Club
Built environment design is recognized as important in the care and management of responsive behaviors for those living with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias in secured dementia care units (e.g., exiting attempts, agitation).
The repetitious behavior of “walking with purpose” (previously termed wandering) in those with dementia has influenced safety-related architectural design components of dementia care units that decrease exiting attempts. Empirical literature addressing design interventions to prevent exiting for those with dementia is lacking and outdated.
To advance our understanding, the presenter sought to describe design interventions in dementia care units through a topical analysis of experimental studies. The studies assessed five interior design interventions at egress doorways: implementing horizontal and vertical floor grid patterns, mirrors, murals, conditioning responses to color cues, and camouflaging door hardware or vision panels.
Click HERE for more information.
Webinars
Event: Invited Keynote Speaker, Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) Long Term Care Working Group, RAIC 2022 Virtual Conference on Architecture
Title: Architectural Design as a Determinant of Heath
Date: June 8, 2022
Lecture Overview
A growing body of empirical data and evidence-based design research demonstrates that architecture impacts care delivery as well as health outcomes. This talk explores built space as an important determinant of health and questions whether the built environment itself should be considered alongside other parameters of care, analogous to our medical interventions. A current focus on design equity, ensuring overall accessibility to healthcare built space, is explored. It is imperative that we consider a convergence of the healthcare and design disciplines in order to promote novel solutions to augment built environment resilience and subsequently support equitable, safe and efficient care delivery.
Learning Objectives
For more information see the conference program HERE.
Keynote Presentations
Event: Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) Annual Conference – Annual Conference
Presentation type: Conference presentation and discussion
Presenters: William J. Hercules, MArch, FAIA, FACHA, FACHE, David Deemer, MD, Diana Anderson, MD, MArch, Stowe Lock Teti, MA, HEC-C
Date: February 25, 2022
Learning Objectives
• Understand how the built environment can help resolve the conflicting obligations of isolation for disease mitigation and the need for socialization and autonomy.
• Demonstrate the increasing impact the healthcare built environment is having on health and as a dimension of duty of care.
Title: Architecture 5 10 20 Episode 2
Podcast: FXCollaborative Architecture 5 10 20
Date: February 15, 2022
Introducing architecture 5 10 20 – a new podcast hosted by FXCollaborative’s Guy Geier. Listen to Architecture 5 10 20 Episode 2 with Diana Anderson, MD, ACHA, the “dochitect,” and Guy Geier:
“Our core thesis is that the built environment is a medical intervention. And it should be subject to the same ethical scrutiny as we do in pharmaceutical trials and clinical care. You know, we have a duty to study what we’re designing and make sure that we’re not causing harm through the spaces that we are building.”
Direct Download URL
https://lnkd.in/eCKvmjzn
Apple Podcasts (for iPhone or Mac)
https://lnkd.in/ewvgKxYh
Spotify (for iPhone or Android)
https://lnkd.in/eV5RZtp2
Google Podcasts (for Android or PC)
https://lnkd.in/e9sWr3UP
Event: The Future Hospital: Critical Care 2050
Date: January 26, 2022, 17.00–18.30 GMT
New “innovation” series on SALUS TV to explore the future hospital to 2050:
The pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges for healthcare, but it has also paved the way for transformational change in preparedness, response and recovery. Expandable and flexible bed and staffing capacities, safer ICU design, more effective triage, digital transformation and adoption of AI, and new approaches to communication with patients and families are all changing the way critical care services and facilities are being planned and designed. An expert panel will imagine what critical care medicine and the settings in which it is delivered will look like in the future.
Panel:
Click HERE to learn more about the Future Hospital 5050 series.
Event: American Society for Bioethics + Humanities (ASBH) – Annual Meeting
Presentation type: Panel presentation & discussion
Presenters: Stowe Lock Teti, MA, HEC-C, Diana Anderson, MD, MArch, William J. Hercules, MArch, FAIA, FACHA, FACHE, David Deemer, MD
Date: October 14, 2021
Overview
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to provide salient examples of the built environment’s impact on disease morbidity and mortality. While design changes are being proposed to address various high-risk design elements like congregate living quarters, it is uncertain whether or not these changes will be ethically informed. Advances in architectural design and a growing understanding of its powerful effects on health outcomes suggest that healthcare environments should be regarded as medical interventions. This panel will explore the ethical challenges related to architectural design modifications aimed to mitigate disease spread and improve quality of life. Examples will be drawn from proposed changes to long term care facilities and hospitals, as both are confined environments in which vulnerable populations live, in which healthcare is provided, and in which organizations have a duty of care to persons inhabiting those spaces.
Ethical challenges discussed will include: isolation for disease control versus the necessity of human socialization and autonomy, risks posed to staff versus the necessity of care provision, and the relationship between institutional policy and the built environment in disease control and well-being. The panel will inspire and empower attendees from various backgrounds to host compelling discussions with healthcare leaders and clinicians on how to utilize the built environment to improve out comes in their organizations.
Learning Objectives:
Event: Advances in Brain Health, hosted by Wolters Kluwer Health
Panelists: José Biller MD, Jason Karlawish MD, Diana Anderson MD
Date: October 12, 2021
Panel Discussion: Advances in Brain Health
Please join us for an interactive discussion about new and evolving topics in the treatment of neurological diseases and new ways to consider the long-term health of your patients. Join experts as they discuss current topics in neurology, including:
Panelists:
José Biller, MD, Professor and Chair, Department of Neurology, Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine, Loyola University Medical Center; Editor, Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases
Jason Karlawish, MD, Professor of Medicine, Medical Ethics and Health Policy, and Neurology, University of Pennsylvania; Co-Director, Penn Memory Center; Author, The Problem of Alzheimer’s: How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease into a Crisis and What We Can Do About It
Diana Anderson, MD, M.Arch, ACHA, Founder, Dochitect, Fellow in Geriatric Neurology, VA Boston Healthcare System, Instructor of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine
Moderator: Susan Dentzer, Senior Policy Fellow, Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, Duke University
Panel Discussions
Event: American Health Care Association / National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) 2021 Convention and Expo, Washington, DC
Speakers: Diana Anderson MD M.Arch, Thomas Grey Dip.Arch.B.Arch.Sci.MArch., Desmond O’Neill MD
Date: October 11, 2021
Nursing Home Design and COVID-19: Balancing Infection Control, Quality of Life, and Resilience
Many nursing home design models can have a negative impact on older people, and these flaws have been compounded by COVID-19 and related infection-control failures. There is now an urgent need to examine these models and provide alternative and holistic models that balance infection control and quality of life at multiple spatial scales in existing and proposed settings. Moreover, there is an understanding that certain design models and approaches that improve quality of life will also benefit infection control, support greater resilience, and in turn improve overall pandemic preparedness.
3 Learning Outcomes:
Upon completion, participant will be able to:
1) explain the overall impact of the built environment on nursing home residents in terms of quality of life
2) understand the main built environment related infection control issues that have arisen during COVID
3) explain how certain design approaches and models can be use to balance infection control while improving quality of life
