health systems & design

Architectural concepts developed by Texas A&M BED students for a health clinic catering to the under and underinsured will be unveiled to the public 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 25 at Baptist University of the Americas in San Antonio.

Relationships between architectural design and health care for the under and uninsured are the focus of the Center for Health Systems & Design’s Spring 2012 Architecture-for-Health Lecture Series.

Xuemei Zhu, assistant professor of architecture, co-authored a paper summarizing the research behind active living — a new, comprehensive way of tackling obesity involving the built environment — in the new edition of a journal published by the Institute for Comprehensive Community Development.

Designs for an eye hospital in Puyang, China, created by students in a Texas A&M health facility design studio in collaboration with students at Southeast University in Nanjing, China and the University of Oklahoma, were unveiled in a public presentation Dec. 5 in the Wright Gallery.

The collaboration between design programs at Texas A&M University, top schools in China and at the University of Oklahoma continued during the week of Oct. 10, 2011 during a trip to China by George J. Mann, Texas A&M professor of architecture, and colleagues from OU.

Recent Master of Architecture grad Erin Peavey will discuss how nursing units can be designed to aid staff communication, a vital component of effective hospital care, at a healthcare design conference in Nashville.

Anesthesiologists were shown to have greater awareness of a patient’s condition using tactile feedback systems developed by Texas A&M Center for Health Systems & Design faculty fellow Thomas Ferris, an assistant professor of industrial systems and engineering.

Mardelle McCuskey Shepley, professor of architecture at Texas A&M and director of the Center for Health Systems and Design, has been elevated to membership in the American College of Healthcare Architects’ Council of Fellows for advancing the standards of architectural education, training and practice.

Master of Architecture students at Texas A&M are teaming with graduate students in industrial engineering to improve the psychosocial and engineering aspects of the incubator, the central piece of equipment used in neonatal intensive care units.

Chinese and U.S. healthcare design experts will deliver a series of lectures during the semester, most beginning at 11:30 a.m. Wednesdays at the Wright Gallery in building A of the Langford Architecture Center.

Southern Ellis, who holds two design degrees from Texas A&M, will be at HKS Inc.’s Dallas office working on healthcare projects and performing research as its 2011-12 healthcare fellow. “I have found an amazing opportunity to directly affect the lives of people through the creation of healing environments,” said Ellis.

With a 2011 fellowship from the American Institute of Architects, Amy Kircher, an M.Arch student at Texas A&M, will design a prototype outpatient healthcare facility based on her research that suggests a new direction for preventative care building design and a new way of thinking about healthcare architecture.

Chanam Lee, professor of urban planning at Texas A&M, will tell the American Public Health Association how the built environment can impede the physical activity of children and overweight adults at the group’s annual meeting this fall in Washington, D.C.

Students in a Texas A&M architecture-for-health design studio collaborated with the university's Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture to develop design concepts for Rehab Nova, a new multipurpose health training and agriculture facility to be located in Africa's newest country, South Sudan.

Ed Tarlton, an urban and regional science Ph.D student at Texas A&M, discussed the connections between housing and health at the Spring 2011 Visionary Scholar Seminar Series sponsored by the university’s Center for the Study of Health Disparities.