Leading Black Voices for Healthy Buildings
Much more than a trend, the healthy buildings movement embodies an ambitious goal to transform the market, advocating for places and spaces that foster our health and well-being. At the heart of our movement is a rich tapestry of diverse voices and leaders, each bringing their unique perspectives and insights to the forefront. Among these are many influential Black leaders who have supported efforts to advance a shared mission of healthy buildings, organizations, and communities.
In celebration of Black History Month, we are highlighting some of the voices of Black leaders who have joined in this work, offering insights into the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in the healthy buildings movement. The leaders quoted below include a former U.S. Surgeon General, a former mayor who is now advising President Biden, the longtime leader of a storied organization for designers, the head of one of the most important public health organizations in the country, a visionary from philanthropy who coined the term “culture of health," and a finance leader working to transform the investment landscape to address racial inequity.
“From a health policy perspective, we have a huge opportunity to accelerate healthy building best practices and make sure all our places and spaces are better positioned to help protect and promote human health. But it starts with rethinking how we craft building policy at all levels of government, which is made especially urgent in the face of escalating health threats posed by climate change."
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“I’m proud we were able to pass that [2020 U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Healthy Building] policy resolution that summer, but I’m prouder that it passed unanimously. Mayors everywhere got the message and understood that we needed healthy buildings to create healthier communities. Since then, more than three dozen cities have used WELL in some capacity, those projects representing nearly 25 million square feet of public space. And three cities have deployed WELL across their municipal portfolios. And I know more and more cities will continue to lead and help accelerate the WELL movement.”
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“My belief is design is about what happens on the receiving end. It is not focused on the person who’s doing it, it’s focused on the person who’s receiving it. With that uppermost in the minds of the designer, it’s about the creation of place. Space is great, but place is personal. We as human beings so identify with a sense of place. And whether that is the workplace or whether that’s home or whether that is a park or a restaurant, this crafting of place is so tied in with creating experience. That’s been the trajectory that I’ve seen over two decades, as opposed to interior designers creating these very specific vignettes. We’re creating the human experience and how people feel in a given moment at a given time in a given place.”
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“The buildings we live and work in play a pivotal role in shaping the social determinants, which we know have an enormous impact on human health. With this in mind, we hope our nation’s policymakers will embrace forward-thinking building policies that prioritize health and well-being and ensure that our future public infrastructure investments in buildings do the same.”
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“During my 15 years at the helm of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, we embraced the challenge of pioneering a culture of health, and we knew that we had to find and deliver on solutions that would benefit our schools. More than any other institution in this country, schools underwrite the American promise of equal opportunity and fuel American innovation and progress. ...We cannot achieve true health equity for our youth in decaying schools, and yet when it comes to updating our educational infrastructure, the U.S. is lagging behind – with our children paying the price.”
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Racial inequity is a major threat to the U.S. economy and financial system. “It’s a feature not a bug,” Aiken noted. This is why investors should care and why everyone should care. It’s not only the right thing to do morally, but it threatens economic growth and racial inequity leads to social unrest."
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