49 Roger S. Ulrich Director, Centre for Health Systems and Design Dr. Ulrich is professor at Texas A & M Univer- sity’s College of Architecture. He is an environ- mental psychologist who conducts scientific research on the influences of healthcare facili- ties on patient medical outcomes. He serves as director of the Centre for Health Systems and Design – a multidisciplinary centre housed jointly in the colleges of Architecture and medi- cine. He has conducted research, for example, on the effect of window views on recovery from surgery, and the influence of visual surround- ings on patients in intensive care units and psychiatric wards. Dr Ulrich has developed a Theory of Supportive Design that has become influential as a scientifically grounded yet “de- signer-friendly” guide for creating successful healthcare facilities. Effects of Healthcare Environmental Design on Medical Outcomes Roger S. Ulrich, Ph.D. The goal of DCHP 2000 is to create a multidis- ciplinary scientific forum for presenting re- search and new ideas toward improving the qua- lity of hospital design and care. A premise mo- tivating the conference is that the quality of the design of physical environments can affect pa- tient medical outcomes and care quality. An im- portant impetus for the growing international awareness of healthcare facility design has been mounting scientific evidence that certain envi- ronmental design strategies can promote impro- ved outcomes whereas other approaches can worsen patient health. The theme of DCHP 2000 reflects the shift in the scientific or mainstream medical commu- nity away from a narrow pathogenic conception of disease and health towards an expanded per- spective that includes emphasis on health-pro- moting experiences and processes. Accordingly, conditions or experiences shown by medical re- searchers to be healthful, such as social support and pleasant distraction or entertainment, now become much more important considerations in creating new healthcare facilities and organiza- tional models for delivering care. By contrast, the traditional pathogenic perspective implied that the main requirement placed on healthcare facili- ties should be construed narrowly as the reduc- tion of infection or disease risk exposure. Also, decades of advances in medical science conditio- ned many healthcare designers and administra- tors to concentrate on creating buildings that suc- ceeded as functionally efficient delivery platforms for new medical technology. The emphasis on functional efficiency, together with the pathogenic conception of disease and health, has often pro- duced healthcare facilities with environments now considered starkly institutional, stressful, and detrimental to care quality (Ulrich, 1991, 1992; Horsburgh, 1995). In spite of the major stress caused by illness and traumatizing hospital expe- riences, comparatively little emphasis has been given to creating surroundings that calm patients, strengthen their coping resources, or otherwise address psychological and social needs. The new broader perspective in medicine requires that the psychological and social needs of patients be strongly emphasized along with tradi- tional economic and biomedical concerns, includ- ing disease risk exposure and functional efficiency, in governing the care activities and design of healthcare buildings. DCHP 2000 was planned with the goal of stimulating progress in identify- ing and understanding aspects of the physical