Health & Healthcare

The Novartis Foundation and the University of Basel, together with other partners are pleased to announce the launch of Healthy Schools for Healthy Communities. The initiative aims to address poor health in disadvantaged schools in South Africa and is the first Novartis Foundation program to include the education sector, bringing new opportunities for achieving impact.

Code of Support Foundation™ (COSF) has been awarded an additional round of critical funding by Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation (BMSF) to complete the pilot phase and publicly launch PATRIOTlink™, an innovative cloud-based navigation platform in 2018. Out of the 22 million veterans in the U.S., an estimated 30% of veteran families in crisis require critical assistance from one or more service providers (e.g., case managers, social workers) to ensure they have wrap-around support for their needs. COSF’s PATRIOTlink is a strategically populated technology platform of qualified veteran support resources that enables service providers to be substantially more efficient and effective in finding resources they know would benefit their clients (e.g., troops, veterans and families.)

Today’s computers all use a basic architecture pioneered more than 60 years ago. A processor computes using data in memory. That memory is quick to access and very close to the processor. However, it’s also limited in size. So when the processor is ready for more data, it fetches it from a larger, slower storage system, and swaps the new data into memory to continue calculating.

When Cynthia Small was hired to work at Whirlpool Corp. as a nurse practitioner, the idea of having a health professional on-site was a relatively new idea for the appliance maker.

Human resource professionals see firsthand the benefits of promoting health and wellness in the workplace. As people, we spend about 90 percent of our time indoors, and a lot of that time is spent at work. HR departments are always experimenting with new approaches to enhance employee health and wellness, and now, leading research is demonstrating how better buildings can help make people more productive, reduce absenteeism and create more enjoyable, healthful work environments.

Dr. Eoin King is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Acoustics at the University of Hartford. King is well known through the industry for having developed novel environmental noise assessment techniques, with a particular focus on strategic noise mapping. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute of Noise Control Engineering of the USA (INCE-USA) and is Managing Editor for the publication Noise/News International. Eoin spoke with us about the dangers of environmental noise pollution and why it’s essential that our communities shift their focus from noise control to proactive sound design.

At IWBI, we believe that all projects and building space types should be able (and encouraged) to apply the WELL Building Standard™. Access to spaces that optimize our health and mental well-being is a fundamental human right. To further this goal, in February 2017, IWBI introduced a pathway for new project types to pursue WELL Certification. This pathway allows for all building type sectors to collaborate with IWBI to adapt the WELL v1 and pilot programs through the creation of a custom scorecard. Our mantra is: all projects in.

Have you ever wondered how the diverse soundscape you experience in your day to day can impact your health and productivity? This month, we released our Acoustics WELLography, which provides you with a comprehensive overview of sound and the built environment, how we experience and are impacted by sound, and strategies that can be applied to mitigate the negative risks associated with noise and other distracting sounds.

Workplace wellness can be a heavy lift for companies everywhere. In addition to the initial investment, companies must ensure employee participation and effectiveness to attain the desired outcomes. Yet 70% of healthcare costs in America are affected by the environments in which people live and work. So dropping these programs entirely isn’t a financially or socially viable option, either.