🔒In health care, outdoor settings matter

A growing body of research shows that exposure to outdoor green spaces improves cognitive, mental and physical health.

Healthcare facilities in Connecticut and beyond are taking advantage of even limited outdoor space to extend their mission of healing and wellness into the outdoors. This trend offers opportunities for local providers to tap the hidden potential of roof tops, entry ways, streetscapes, and even parking lots to better serve their patients.

Supporting this trend is research presented at a recent conference at Yale called “Health of Place,” organized by the Northeast Summit for a Sustainable Built Environment.

There, public health researchers from Harvard University reported important links between well-being and the design of specific aspects of the landscape including aesthetics, accessibility and connectivity.

While technical advances in health care have eclipsed these ideas, the intuitive connection between healing and nature appears to be regaining ground in part due to the emergence of evidence-based design. One recent Connecticut example is a new neonatal intensive care roof garden at Danbury Hospital designed with lush planted areas to feel like a park setting. Seating areas as well as contemplative areas were developed using textures and colors found in nature, which create an immersive natural experience.

Two avenues exist for healthcare facilities to take advantage of landscape design to better the health of their patients.

One is the familiar concept of the healing garden, where therapeutic benefits are tailored to address specialized physical or mental health conditions or populations. The other provides a broader stress-busting effect in promoting health in the larger context.

Many opportunities to improve wellbeing through nature also have environmental benefits. In addition to critical health benefits, living landscape spaces manage stormwater, moderate heating and cooling needs, and improve air quality.

With increasing build-out of hospitals on limited campus space, sometimes the challenge is finding room for these natural landscapes. Booming healthcare construction over the last decade has increased parking needs and reduced open spaces.

However, the way patients arrive to campus, find parking and navigate to the front door all play an important part in how welcoming a facility is to visitors. Research has shown that much of the stress of a doctor's visit is not the visit itself but the anxiety felt in the waiting room.

Ultimately, when you think expansively about healthcare campuses and the patient experience, it is the sidewalks, parking lots and walkways that are the first waiting rooms.

So how can we best leverage the outdoors at a hospital campus to improve patient well-being?

Examples include adding roof gardens, activated garden walls and extensive planting beds.

Further strategies for creating value within the landscape to attract patients and promote human health include:

• Balancing “green to grey” ratios by maximizing green space and minimizing pavement;

• Converting underutilized rooftops and vertical surfaces to green space and features;

• Creating accessible space for a wide spectrum of users, from strollers, to wheelchairs, to the elderly;

• Providing varied seating options within green outdoor spaces;

• Making it as easy as possible to get from the parking lot to the front door of a hospital or medical facility;

• Utilizing a participatory process to develop the overall “environment of care” so all needs are considered.

Kristin Schwab and Claudia Dinep are principals of landscape architecture firm Dinep + Schwab in West Hartford.