Hi Task Force members,

Last week, we launched the Places Matter forum, the digital home of the Task Force and an interactive hub designed to garner your insights and cultivate dialogue amongst Task Force members. Our work starts now and your voice matters. We want to hear from you.

We’ve already received dozens of thoughtful comments, evidence-based strategies and studies that will inform a set of public resources to help business and building leaders around the world integrate actionable insights and proven strategies in the fight against COVID-19 and other respiratory infections.

We look forward to your ongoing input and dialogue on the Places Matter forum. Here’s what we’re hearing from you so far:

The Future of Free Address

Spatial layout of furniture within enclosed environments, and circulation spaces (queueing areas, corridors, etc.) as COVID-19 aside, there will be other (perhaps more common) viruses that will be present that may compromise individuals and their health at any time. What is considered a "safe" distance between workspaces, without impacting on morale, communication, the sense of "team"?

- Mei-Yee Man Oram

Air Quality Monitoring and Awareness

This [A08] is a key [feature] for the greater population to get a hands-on understanding of what is in the air they are breathing and how that relates to health and likelihood of catching/spreading COVID-19. Although the [feature] does not currently mention relative humidity as a measure, this is one of the primary factors of air quality that affects the survivability of COVID-19. My recommendation is to emphasize this [feature] and add humidity to the list of potential aspects of air quality to monitor.

- Jonathan Young

Do you have a response to any of the above comments? Share your thoughts.

Hear From Our Task Force Members

I joined the Task Force because...

“...we are facing challenging times. We all need to leverage our expertise and do our part. Design professionals are in a unique position to help building occupants make wise decisions, not just reactive ones, and come out stronger on the other side. We believe in the power of informed design that addresses the health, safety and welfare of all."

- Kay Sargent, Director of WorkPlace, HOK 

"...health and sustainability are one and the same. When we solve for one we solve for both. Let’s use the green economy to fuel our post pandemic recovery with sustainable buildings at the forefront of a new health transformation.”

- John Mandyck, CEO, Urban Green Council

"...as one of the early WELL consultants, our clients are looking to us to help them understand how to recover from the current COVID-19 pandemic as they prepare in advance to return to their spaces. I was eager to join the Task Force to be informed by global leaders with trusted information that I could provide to my clients, while mutually informing the Task Force and WELL Building Standard of the concerns and issues my clients are facing as they realize that the places where they live, work, learn, and play matter so very much in this ever evolving new normal."

- Jennifer Berthelot-Jelovic, President and CEO, A SustainAble Production (ASAP)

"...the intersection between salutogenesis and design is a vehicle through which I can go from a researcher and collector of knowledge to a focused agent of positive change, working to safeguard and improve the lives of my friends and family, colleagues and clients, neighbors and community. It is through periods of past hardship that our predecessors drove forward so many reforms to improve the built environment, and I am proud to join that legacy in directly translating thought into actions through design work and advocacy for regulatory change.”

- Lida Lewis, Founder, Bespoke Design Studios

Attend our Upcoming Webinar

Places Matter for Mental Resilience 

Cultivating resilience through mindful practice

April 15 at 12 p.m. ET

With managers looking for new ways to support their teams virtually, parents becoming teachers overnight, unemployment growing at a rapid rate and family members staying apart in an effort to protect one another - COVID-19 is directly impacting our daily routines, environments and lifestyles in ways we never could have imagined. Join IWBI President Rachel Gutter and New York Times best-selling author and clinical professor of psychiatry Dr. Dan Siegel for a discussion about cultivating mental resilience through mindful practice and strategies for leaders, colleagues, family and friends working through trauma and generational shifts stemming from COVID-19.

Register now →

What We're Reading

Check out these articles authored by our Task Force co-chairs

• How to beat the coronavirus and return to a new normal (USA Today) by Joseph Allen
• Coronavirus and what needs to be done to get in front of global pandemics (The Hill) by Jonathan Fielding