Translating Research into Practice: A Blueprint for a Healthier World
The spaces we create and inhabit are intimately and inextricably connected to human health. Simply put, the buildings where we live, work, study and relax have a profound impact on our physical and mental well-being, for better or for worse.
The scale of these impacts has been brought into sharp relief over the past twelve months. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an urgent demand not only for further research into the many factors that link buildings and communities with human well-being, but also for translating these findings into practices that have the potential to benefit everyone, everywhere.
Since IWBI’s inception, research has been the backbone of everything that we do, everything we create and all that we believe.
We think that our special talent, though, lies in translating that research into practice: in taking the evidence we discover and using it to codify practical, meaningful and achievable strategies for advancing human health and well-being through people first places. In the act of interpretation we unearth the gaps in our knowledge.
Pinpointing these gaps and articulating research priorities is the focus of our new IWBI Global Research Agenda: Health, Well-Being and the Built Environment. The GRA represents more than a year’s worth of analysis and evaluation by The IWBI Research Advisory. We plan to use it to catalyze resources in response to the challenges we face, stimulating opportunities for partnership by matching researchers to both their subjects and prospective funders.
The partnership approach is important. Our own experience has shown us that there’s little point in investing in research if it ends up languishing in a vacuum. Research gets published all the time in white papers and peer review journals – but even ground-breaking studies will wither and die unless they attract partners that can interpret and amplify the findings.
A great example of such a partnership in action is the study into how green buildings positively affect health and cognitive function, led by Dr Joe Allen and his team at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Health and the Global Environment. Fortune 500 company Carrier has been a key part of the venture, providing funding for all four phases of COGfx as well as broadcasting the findings to an audience of architects and engineers, real estate executives and facility managers.
The funding that researchers are able to attract for their work often doesn’t include a budget for marketing their findings – nor does academia reward them for this. And yet, market transformation at scale can’t happen without interpreting and communicating research findings to the broader community. A layperson can’t be expected to pick up a peer-reviewed journal and automatically make sense of complex research propositions. By conveying detailed findings to practitioners in accessible language, organizations like IWBI have an important role to play in translating research into practice.
Our new research digests illustrate this process perfectly. Incorporating the consolidated research that underpins our 100+ WELL features, these digests have been very much a labor of love – the result of countless hours of input from many staff members and outside contributors. Our goal was to make sure that our community of WELL APs, WELL Faculty members and WELL champions would always be equipped to be able to answer the question: “Why does WELL matter and what benefits can I expect?” We wanted to arm our users with not just practical strategies for making change but with the evidence and science that speaks to their efficacy and veracity.
The greatest challenge wasn’t in collecting and amassing the evidence, but rather in interpreting the research in a way that accurately represented the findings in all their complexity, while making it as easy as possible for laypeople to understand. We are profoundly grateful to the many researchers and contributors who have donated their expertise and energy to developing the GRA and advancing the field through their research. The real work is theirs, we’re the interpreters – extending its reach to a wider audience.
Research isn’t just the foundation of everything we do, it’s the heartbeat of our movement. It fuels and powers market transformation, steepening the curve of adoption by helping to make the case for why we should all be WELL, and propelling us towards a brighter, more optimistic future.
Rachel Hodgdon is President and CEO of the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), a public benefit corporation and the world’s leading organization focused on deploying people first places to advance a global culture of health.