Healthy Buildings, Healthy Lives

What exactly are healthy buildings? Quite simply, healthy buildings help to maintain the health and well being of their occupants by creating a healthy indoor environment. The health of the indoor environment can have a particularly significant impact on people – especially those with asthma. Allergens that are often found within the indoor environment, such as dust mites, other pests, such as cockroaches and rodents, and mold are all related to asthma symptoms and unfortunately these triggers are ubiquitous in urban housing. 

At the Boston Public Health Commission, we work collaboratively within the community to address environmental triggers, teach residents how to better manage their asthma and their environment, and support residents when their indoor environment is making them sick and it is out of their control. We conduct over 100 direct service home visits for families with asthma each year to help people create healthier indoor environments within their homes. Because we work collaboratively across the community and leverage one another’s resources, we are able to offer services that we otherwise couldn’t, such as services in multiple languages like Haitian and Cape Verdean Creole, Spanish, Cantonese and Mandarin.

We also established the Breathe Easy At Home program, which is a collaborative effort among city agencies and health care institutions. This program enables clinicians to make online referrals for housing code enforcement inspections for their patients with asthma. A patient, with asthma, tells their doctor about a health concern related to their home environment, the clinician reports it through an on-line system, an inspection is performed, and the clinician receives continued information about the resolution of the complaint. The clinician can make the referral while their patient is in the office. The feedback reinforces health care providers to continue to report housing code referrals. Any clinical site in Boston can register as a user and clinicians are reminded to use the system to help their patients with asthma manage a part of their environment. 

How are you creating healthy buildings in your community?