Promoting Health throughout the Project Delivery Cycle

The built environment profoundly shapes health outcomes across multiple scales—from individual occupants to neighboring communities and global supply chains. The public health impacts of the built environment are not uniform across populations, with climate change and toxic chemical exposures creating disproportionate burdens on marginalized communities. This opening session establishes how building performance intersects with these public health and climate challenges, setting the stage for the Summit's exploration of actionable strategies throughout the project delivery cycle.

Built environment practitioners can proactively promote health using integrative approaches that incorporate community input, public health data, and collaboration across diverse stakeholder groups. The panel will explore the concept of "healthy spaces for all," examining how real estate, design, engineering, and construction decisions impact health and well-being. Panelists will discuss how building performance ripples outward, from the project boundaries to impacts on local community health as well as across the full project lifecycle and supply chain.

An increasing body of financial research demonstrates compelling return-on-investment (ROI) for health-focused building strategies, making it easier to advocate for a people-centric approach. The panel will establish this case that links human and financial outcomes, equipping practitioners with ROI messages needed to engage diverse decision makers—from investors and developers to facility managers and community leaders.

The panel will close with an interactive workshop allowing participants to apply these concepts and connect with fellow attendees. This hands-on exercise demonstrates how to utilize an integrative process that leverages tools from both LEED and WELL to assess a project's environmental and public health context, engage key stakeholders, establish explicit health goals, implement targeted strategies, and plan for ongoing impact monitoring.