School research center director honored by national health design group
As a leader who has changed the way healthcare facilities are designed and built, Ray Pentecost, director of Texas A&M’s Center for Health Systems and Design, has earned the 2022 Changemaker award from the Center for Health Design.
He will be presented with the honor at the Healthcare Design Conference + Expo at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio Oct. 8-11.
“The global reach and impact of Ray’s contributions to healthcare design and architecture are incredible and immeasurable,” said Debra Levin, president and CEO of The Center for Health Design, a nonprofit organization of healthcare designers and professionals dedicated to improving the quality of healthcare through design of the built environment. “The important changes he has championed in military healthcare, in professional architectural academies and associations, and in academia ripple throughout our industry and lives.”
One of the nation’s foremost advocates and practitioners of healthcare facility evidence-based design, Pentecost, who also directs the International Union of Architects – Public Health Group, has helped guide the worldwide architecture community toward the idea that every project in every practice around the world impacts the health of the people who experience it.
At Texas A&M, Pentecost heads a research center that is home to the world’s largest group of interdisciplinary faculty, students, and affiliated professionals committed to healthcare facility environment research and education.
The Texas A&M center examines how the built and natural environments affect patients, influence healing, pain relief, quality health care, physical activity, social interaction, work flow and other behaviors. The center’s ground-breaking work at the nexus of design and health is thriving under Pentecost’s leadership.
To support the broader CHSD mission in an advisory capacity, Ray created the Academic Circle, composed of representatives from the deans of all 19 Texas A&M academic units, driving the growth of the CHSD Faculty Fellows to 118 scholars and researchers. This exceptional change has dramatically increased the ability to develop cross-disciplinary research, a rich, multidisciplinary curriculum, and an industry response capability that covers every possible domain.
Pentecost’s major contributions in the healthcare design field precede his appointment as the CHSD director.
In 2009, at the invitation of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Pentecost chaired a congressionally mandated panel to evaluate the U.S. military’s global health system and develop a definition of “world class” to be applied to military healthcare facilities.
His contributions helped spur creation of the World Class Design Toolkit, which continues to shape military healthcare construction and project development to this day with improved design quality and functionality. These standards were codified into U.S. law in 2010 and became the standard for military healthcare facilities.
Pentecost transformed the American Institute of Architects’ approach to design and health as the two-term president of the AIA’s Academy of Architecture for Health.
He co-led an initiative to revise the academy’s bylaws to focus on healthy communities as well as healthcare facilities, and also co-led the AIA’s America’s Design and Health Initiative. He also served on The Design and Health Leadership Group advising the AIA, and on The Design and Health Research Consortium, which represents a collective research voice of more than 20 universities.
