Lorissa MacAllister, PhD, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP, EDAC, has won the prestigious New Investigator Research Award from the Center for Health Design’s Research Coalition. Her research project, “Improving Patient Satisfaction and Experience through Supportive Design,” builds on her dissertation, where she discovered that design factors such as room layout predict patient perceptions of physicians and nurses.

In this study, Dr. MacAllister will collaborate with Dr. Cláudia Campos Andrade (ISCTE-IUL, Lisbon University Institute), Dr. Ann Sloan Devlin (Connecticut College), Dr. Erica Ryherd (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), and Dr. Craig Zimring (Georgia Institute of Technology) to use Ulrich’s (1991) supportive design theory as a framework and the defined spatial variables by Andrade and Devlin (2015) lab study and Devlin, Andrade, and Lima (2014) field study report to further explore the role of spatial layout and design on patient satisfaction and HCAHPS scores at Emory University Hospital.

This award not only furthers Lorissa’s research, it also allows her to serve as a member of the Center for Health Design’s Research Coalition for one year, and to present her completed research at the 2016 Healthcare Design Conference.

Dr. MacAllister is the president and founder of Enviah and a Senior Research Fellow at the Samueli Institute.

Read the full press release here.