Health promotive ambitions related to building design – the case of Angered Nearby Hospital

Paper in proceeding, 2017

The healthcare system in Sweden is re-orienting and transforming to embrace a holistic perspective on health, which includes a focus on Health Promotion. This development has led to new ambitions and processes in healthcare and has thus changed the requirements for related building design. This explorative study, based on a content analysis of 9 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders involved in the planning and design process of Angered Nearby Hospital (Närsjukhus), investigates how the building design was influenced by Health Promotion ambitions. Questions focused on expectations and challenges for the new building. The results illustrate how Health Promotion was interpreted in the design process and how expectations were described, e.g., as a “welcoming environment” or “active environment”. It is found that the understanding of how to interpret Health Promotion in design is vague and performed without any guidelines other than at the policy level. This lack of clarity is also related to the difficulty of finding studies on the topic. The results also point to a need for clarification of how Health Promotion can be interpreted in design, the need for Health Promotion-related design guidelines, and the need for definitions of requirements at the project level to measure health-promotive effects.