Environmental Design for Dementia-Friendly Spaces
2 HSW CE Credits - AIA # DAS490 - IDCEC # 119352 - FL BOAID # 9879155 - LSBID # 11.892.24
By 2050, dementia is expected to affect 152 million people worldwide. There is no cure and few treatments that can help slow the disease's progression or manage the symptoms. However, design can play a significant role in creating safe, comfortable, and stimulating environments for people with dementia. This lecture will discuss the role of environmental design interventions in mitigating disruptive behaviors, improving quality of life, reducing stress, and providing support for caregivers. Explore how these strategies can help bridge the emotional experience with sensory, perceptive, and reminiscent memory to help mitigate disruptive behaviors and their triggers. Design can transform caring for those with dementia from merely keeping them safe to providing a rich experience. Environmental design interventions can help decode dementia's visceral world and support non-cognitive human experiences improving the health, safety and wellbeing of the person living with dementia and those that support them.
Barbara Huelet
Barbara J. Huelat, FASID, AAHID, EDAC, is nationally recognized for work in patient-centered design. Her three decades as a design practitioner cover virtually all types, components and sizes of domestic and international healthcare, government, and VA facilities. Currently, she is Design Principal of the interiors firm Healing Design in Alexandria, VA.
She is a past president of the American Academy of Healthcare Interior Designers. Barbara has been honored with numerous design awards for projects of excellence, as well as personal recognition for ASID, Designer of Distinction, Humanities Design Award, Luminary Award and Fellow. Huelat has authored three books: Taming the Chaos of Dementia: A Caregiver’s Guide to Interventions that Make a Difference, Healing Environments: Design for the Body Mind & Spirit and Healing Environments, What’s the Proof? Barbara lectures frequently on a spectrum of healthcare design topics. She resides in Alexandria, VA.
Her design thinking, books, blogs, and writing are sought after by popular press, academic journals, students, and the consumer. Many have been translated into Chinese and disturbed throughout Asia.
