Join IAQA for the last Live Webinar of 2022!

“Buildings Are Our Best Medicine”

Presented by: Stephanie Taylor, MD, M Arch

When: Thursday December 8, 2022 at 11:00 AM Eastern

Click Here to Register!

Presentation Description:

The indoor environment, specifically the compounds in the air and thermal metrics, are one of the largest determinants of our health. Despite the influence of indoor exposures on many aspects of our health, productivity, and ability to learn new information, current building standards primarily focus on aesthetics, energy and dramatic failures such as fire and earthquakes. COVID-19 has shifted this emphasis; however, we are still missing a health standard to guide IAQ management specifically for occupant health.

While understanding the interrelationships between indoor environments and human physiology is complex because of multiple contributing factors, we still need to tackle these questions. Without a medically-bases health standard for IAQ, we do not know if ventilation, filtration, humidity management and air cleaning interventions are benefiting occupants.

This presentation will reveal a medically-based framework for quantifying the effect of indoor exposures on our immune system, metabolism, risk of inflammation and microbiome, allowing us to create and operate buildings that are true shelters.

About the Speaker: 

Dr. Stephanie Taylor received her MD from Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts in 1984. For the next several decades, she practiced clinical medicine and did academic research in cellular growth mechanisms.

During her clinical work, she became increasingly concerned that the hospital building played a role in the healthcare-associated infections that many patients acquired during their in-patient treatment. Determined to gain a better understanding of the impact of the built environment on patient healing, she returned to school and obtained her Master’s Degree in Architecture. With new insights, she learned that building materials and indoor air characteristics affect health outcomes not only hospitalized patients, but of all building occupants. New findings reveal the powerful role of indoor air quality in driving acute infections, chronic inflammation, cognitive impairment, and a multitude of other diseases.

She recently co-founded Building4Health, Inc. to scale the underutilized yet powerful approach of IAQ management for disease prevention.

To communicate the fascinating convergence of human health, microbiology and architecture, Dr. Taylor writes monthly columns and bi-annual feature articles for Engineered Systems Magazine and publishes in other healthcare journals. She is an ASHRAE Distinguished Lecturer and is on the Epidemic Task Force and Environmental Health Committee.