Meeting/Event Information

Presentation Description:

The indoor environment, specifically exposure to airborne compounds and thermal metrics, are powerful determinants of health or disease. Despite this influence of indoor exposures on almost all 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 framework for quantifying the effect of indoor exposures on our immune system, metabolism, risk of inflammation and on our microbiome. This data-based approach allows us to manage buildings behave as 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 this time, she became increasingly concerned about patients who were harmed by new infection during their in-patient treatment. Determined to gain a better understanding of the impact of the built environment on patient well-being, she returned to school and obtained her Master's Degree I Architecture and Engineering from Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont. After working for several years in a healthcare design architecture firm, she founded Taylor Healthcare Consulting, Inc., in order to focus on designing, building and maintaining hospitals to better support patient healing. She quickly learned that many of the building and indoor air characteristics that affect people in hospitals also influenced the health of all people in buildings.

Dr. Taylor is currently working at the intersection of architectural design, indoor air management, the microbiome of the built environment and occupant health. She finds the impact of buildings on our health startling! Managing the built environment and indoor air with the goal of decreasing diseases from acute infections to chronic inflammation to cognitive impairment, is a very underutilized yet powerful approach to disease prevention. She finds that her physician insights and biological research helps her understand the science behind the interaction of buildings, human physiology and energy consumption.

Dr. Taylor has designed hospitals globally, from the United States to Papua New Guinea to Vietnam. In addition to her Taylor Healthcare Consulting work, she is a member of the Harvard Medical School Incite Health Fellowship. This program brings together multidisciplinary teams from across the US, trains them in design thinking and entrepreneurship, and gives them the tools and resources to guide the future of medical care.

To communicate her work and understanding about 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 active member of ASHRAE, ASHE and national and international medical associations. When not working elsewhere, Dr. Taylor lives in beautiful Stowe, Vermont with her husband and eight dogs. One of her favorite activities is skydiving, which she finds is great practice for staying outside of her comfort zone!

Thanks to our meeting sponsor Tom Barrow Company for their support of this meeting and the Nashville ASHRAE Chapter.