Laguna Honda research initiatives broke important new ground in 2008-2009. The Laguna Honda Foundation provided funding for projects to improve resident care and sustain a healing environment.
Pebbles Project
The foundation supported collaboration between the hospital and the Center for Health Design in Concord, CA to gauge the impact of the new buildings on resident quality of life and the public benefits Laguna Honda provides to the greater community.
Laguna Honda is one of 55 hospitals or “Pebbles Partners” worldwide conducting research under the auspices of the Center for Health Design on the effects of the built environment on health outcomes. The program is named after the ripple effect a pebble makes when it is dropped into a pool of water.
The quality of life study asks the question how ambulatory and non-ambulatory residents live in, use, and benefit from their surroundings in a post-acute care environment. It is concerned with the meaningful engagement by residents with the neighborhoods and other indoor public spaces in the new hospital and with the substantial outdoor community areas such as the central park and the therapeutic gardens.
The public benefits study will measure a number of different aspects of campus life, such as resident participation in activities, management of psychosocial challenges, safety of medication administration, changes in resident dining experience, sustainability of waste management, staff injuries and sick leave, volunteerism, and philanthropic engagement.
UCSF Initiative
The foundation provided seed money to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco to develop studies that will measure resident, staff, and family perceptions of quality of life and quality of care.
