Business
Herman Miller Partners with Leading Architects to Tackle Healthcare Inequality
From layouts to furniture, a brand-new medical facility paves the way on designing welcoming spaces for underserved communities MCKINNEY, Texas, Feb. 18, 2021
About this update from Millerknoll, Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"From layouts to furniture, a brand-new medical facility paves the way on designing welcoming spaces for underserved communities\n\n\nMCKINNEY, Texas, Feb. 18, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- For some families across the United States, quality medical care—whether for a routine checkup or a serious injury—can be hard to come by. But when a new healthcare facility for an underserved community is opened, providing a space for services is just the beginning. In addition to facilitating quality care, the experience must be designed in a way that reduces anxiety and confronts the preexisting negative perceptions many underserved individuals may have about healthcare. \n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n \nHerman Miller (NASDAQ: MLHR), along with leading architects from MASS Design Group, SmithGroup, Corgan, and Kimley-Horn, and teams from KDC, Rogers-O'Brien Construction, Cross Engineering Consultants, and L.A. Fuess Partners, were tasked with this challenge as they worked with the North Texas Family Health Foundation to build the community of McKinney, Texas a facility that exuded respect, quality, and a commitment to serving every individual equally.\nThe North Texas Family Health Foundation was founded with a goal of ensuring that every member of the community has access to essential primary healthcare and a medical home. The Foundation's first project, Family Health Center on Virginia, has created a new model that fundamentally reimagines how to provide primary care resources for the underserved. By raising local funds to build the new facility and cover start-up costs, the Foundation and their partners are supporting the creation of a sustainable community resource.\n\"We wanted to make primary care available to everyone in the community, regardless of their ability to pay. Health and wellness bolster educational achievement, positively impact employment opportunities, and support a stronger, healthier community,\" said Kate Perry, DrPH, MS, AICP, and Senior Vice President and Senior Director for Healthy Communities for Independent Financial, catalyst and lead donor for the project. \"Beyond this, we also wanted to create a community-oriented space where everyone would feel welcome, cared for, and loved.\"\n\"The success of this project wasn't creating an efficient, safe and state of the art facility—meeting those checkpoints was the starting point,\" ...