HEALTH
How can we leverage the indoor environment to improve people’s health and well-being?
Why health?
Health is one of our research themes and the umbrella that covers everything we examine in the Lab. The Well Living Lab’s other research themes—performance, stress and resiliency, sleep, and comfort–are all components of health.
Health is not just about the absence of disease, it is about quality of life and living well. It is central to well-being, through which we derive satisfaction and fulfillment in our lives.
The indoor environment has a profound impact on health and well-being. It shapes our behavior–even our fitness habits and food choices–influences our moods and affects our sleep. Optimizing the indoor environment to support health and wellness and enrich quality of life requires scientifically understanding the complex interplay between people and the spaces in which we live, work and play.
Desired outcomes from our studies
Our research will show what we can do in indoor environments to help achieve a higher quality of life. We want to understand the factors and combinations of factors in indoor environments that positively and negatively affect human health, such as lighting, acoustics, air quality and thermal conditions.
The Well Living Lab can measure health objectively and subjectively to get a full understanding of being healthy within a home or office.
Our findings can potentially benefit everyone, from an employer who can upgrade an office building, to a builder who is designing a new facility, to a family who has a child with asthma and wants to help that child have fewer asthma attacks.