Bridging the gap between community and healthcare

Being ‘healthy’ is about much more than being free from illness

We teamed up with our friends at Avanti Architects for a joint CPD session to talk about healthcare architecture. We took the opportunity to share projects that connect traditional healthcare settings with the communities they serve. The projects demonstrate how a health-centre can provide so much more than a GP surgery.

The themes for the day were colocation and engagement, with sustainability, future flexibility and connection to community as underlying commitments to deliver projects that are relevant, long life and fit for purpose.

Alasdair Ben Dixon from Collective Works presented three social prescribing projects as well as our scheme for The Quiet Room at North Middlesex Hospital. Adrian Miles and Andrew McKeown from Avanti Architects reciprocated with four healthcare projects that bring together services that can improve community health.

Social prescribing can help reduce the load on GPs by 20% by treating the source of issues before symptoms become medical.

Flourish, the social prescribing hub at Victoria Health Centre, colocates charities within an existing community health centre. GPs are then able to refer patients with broader societal health needs via a link worker to charities such as CAB, Mind, etc, who can advise, support and help to mitigate the issues that are leading to poor health, resulting in preventative healthcare.

Grove Wellbeing Centre in Belfast, by Avanti Architects colocates complementary leisure, health and education services.  The swimming pool and leisure centre, library and health centre are all accessed from one central entrance and atrium, as a focal point for the community. Together, these services can improve community health  – promoting fitness and movement, community groups, education as well as physical health.

Engagement is key to the success of community healthcare projects

With change however, often comes resistance. Engagement is key to the success of any public or healthcare project, from stakeholders to end users.

When we started working on the Social Prescribing projects, we took our design toolkit of colour, biophilia and furniture. However, having now delivered the three schemes, our big takeaway is that the most important tools we brought to these healthcare schemes as a design team were the ability to listen, engage across a wide user group and have the tenacity to take the projects over the line.

Engagement at the Portadown Health and Care Centre in County Armagh emphasised core design work for Avanti Architects. Key to making visits to the healthcentre as stress free and easy as possible were ensuring that the centre was easy- and intuitive – to navigate, naturally lit, with views out, and that the acoustics were calm.

Healthcare starts in the community. Expert input – from patients and professionals alike – is vital to the success of every kind of healthcare space.

Get in touch to talk about how we could help you with a engagement at the feasibility stage of your next healthcare project.

Alasdair Ben Dixon