Adaptive Reuse, Global Pandemics, and Adolescent Behavioral Health in Rural America

Across America, rural communities are lacking adequate in-patient behavioral health facilities for the growing population of adolescents in need of psychiatric care. Designing a behavioral health facility requires an intricate understanding of compliance requirements and a rigorous methodology to the design.

This presentation will focus on the adaptive reuse of an office building into an adolescent behavioral health facility. We will illustrate how our team is helping navigate funding in a predominantly underfunded area of healthcare, the importance of adequate spacing to maximize personal space and mitigate the spread of infection, and the value of enhancing the patient experience through design. KVC Health Systems’ President, Robert Eklofe, will provide insight from the owner’s perspective on how design decisions enhance the clinical functionality of the space. Additionally, we will discuss how this facility is able to provide private, yet accessible care for underserved, rural communities. This presentation will help the audience understand how to approach designing rural adolescent behavioral health facilities to the benefit of entire communities.