USGBC & UVA Receive Grant to Advance Green Health Partnership

Washington, DC, July 15, 2015—The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and the University of Virginia School of Medicine (UVA) have been awarded a three year, $1.2 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to advance their Green Health Partnership.

This research initiative, led by Chris Pyke, Ph.D., (USGBC) and Dr. Matthew Trowbridge (UVA) directly addresses longstanding gaps in the availability of practical tools to promote healthy places.
 

This new phase of funding from RWJF will allow the UVA/USGBC Green Health Partnership to focus on developing two complementary sets of tools:
 new tools for green building project teams to create healthy places and new tools for real estate investors to promote healthy places.

The team will engage with a network of collaborators to create and demonstrate the value of an innovative process for the promotion of public health through the design, construction and operation of green buildings. The goal is to merge green building’s long-standing emphasis on integrative design with well-established public health approaches, such as health impact assessment. The result will be buildings that more systematically, directly, and effectively address the health and wellness needs and desires of their occupants and surrounding communities. 
 

The team will partner with the Amsterdam-based Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark to bring a public health lens to assessments of commercial real estate portfolios.  The goal is to empower institutional investors to pursue health and wellness as investable attributes of real estate in the same way green building allows investment in sustainability performance.  The result will be new opportunities to leverage private capital to create and manage healthier buildings and communities.