WholeSum

Meet the Team Merging Nature and Health on the University of Kentucky Medical Campus

The University of Kentucky Medical Center strives to provide a nurturing and healthy environment for all its users including patients, families, hospital staff, faculty and students. UK has already led the way among Kentucky higher academic institutions in implementing sustainable campus landscapes. This project will substantively further this effort to transform portions of our medical campus outdoor spaces into actively human health-promoting landscapes.

Medical campus, on April 10, 2020. Photo by Mark Cornelison | UKphoto

The focus of this project lies in the Markey Cancer Center Courtyard. The current experience leaves much to be desired with its rough concrete and red gravel exterior. The experience in the Markey Cancer Center courtyard will go from a desolate hardscape to a lush retreat that invites those within the center to explore the sounds and colors of nature. This ecological oasis will be created by combining restorative techniques emphasizing bioretention and stormwater management, increasing biodiversity through the use of native plants, and creating a refuge for patients, visitors, students, and UK healthcare workers to evade the stresses of an intense indoor environment.

Connie Jennings, a Doctor in Integrative Medicine at the University of Kentucky Hospital, was the catalyst initiating the Nature Rx project. She noticed how the Integrated Health Center and Chemotherapy rooms looked out on the current bleak state of the courtyard. She also realized how this view not only affected her mental and emotional states while at work, but how it affected her patients while they were receiving treatments. She also wanted to start this project to remind those at the University of Kentucky how we originated, saying “UK started as a land grant university in 1862, we started because we knew how to take care of the land. I like to encourage people to honor that. It takes something like Nature Rx for us to remember that we need to plant trees and get outside because when we spend time outside all those vitals we measure all the time in the hospital, like heart rate, breath rate, and blood pressure, are improved.”

Photo by Mark Cornelison | UKphoto

Dr. Jennings has been here long enough that, from her third floor window, she has noticed there are less and less trees, and far more buildings and hardscapes than when she started.

In addition to Connie, the Built Environment Working Group, a multidisciplinary team of students and faculty with the goal of reinvigorating campus landscapes through sustainable changes, is working on the project. This team includes: Ned Crankshaw, Rebeca Radtke, Connie Jennings, Terese Bocklage, Carolina Segura, Gregory Davis, Richard Durham, Shari Dutton, Quincy Ipsaro, Daniel Potter, Stacy Borden, Diana Byrne, Paul Masterson, and Abigail Welp.

This project is vastly important to UK because it will serve as an inspirational landscape that provides the benefits of contact with nature, attention restoration, and a sense of welcome and inclusion. Along with wellness benefits, these designed landscapes will improve the quality of stormwater and will host a wide selection of pollinator species. While these ecological aspects are important, the emphasis will be on bridging the gap between people and nature. This is being done through a suite of activities that include education and engagement, design, the transformation of selected landscapes, and research assessing human and environmental benefits.

Most importantly, this reinvention of exterior spaces supports visitors, patients, and UK HealthCare employees that use the space on a daily basis. This project will provide sanctuary for each of these groups and create a campus focused on the health of both people and the environment.

Quincy Ipsaro

Most discussed