Please note date of the March meeting is Friday, March 11 and the program starts at 11:00 am
Title: VHA's Multi-Sensory Environments - Innovations to Improve Behavioral Health for those with Dementia
Presenter: Lesa Lorusso, PhD; Healthcare Director of Research and Insights, Gresham Smith
Date/Time: March 11th at 11:00 am CDT (virtual program) followed by lunch and the Huntsville Post Board of Directors meeting @ the Atrium, RFCU (Redstone Federal Credit Union)
Short summary:The global population is aging rapidly, signifying the importance of developing innovative, flexible care options for resilient buildings. Innovation in person-centered built environments has proven to illicit positive emotions and behavioral responses in aging patients. However, implementing environmental innovations within complex healthcare organizations requires strong collaboration between designers, researchers and medical staff. As part of an innovation initiative, the Veterans Health System has provided behavioral health therapy in the form of multisensory environments since 2010. Research from this study gathered critical data from 23 medical staff from 12 different sites to better understand how built environments impact patients and caregivers. Common themes emerged in understanding staff perceptions about barriers, as well as uptake and effectiveness of multisensory environments. Findings indicate that multisensory environments are perceived to be effective in improving behavioral health for Veterans and represent an innovation that has been well-applied and has great potential for flexible, resilient healthcare solutions. This presentation will highlight the 20-week, qualitative and quantitative research study to understand the effect of multi-sensory environments. Come learn more about the themes that emerged, how the innovation diffused throughout the systems, and how findings are being used to improve future designs and implementation strategies of multisensory environments at the VA.
