The Center for Health Design is happy to announce that Jain Malkin, CID, AAHID, EDAC, has been awarded the Russ Coile Lifetime Achievement Award. Established in 2007 in honor of the late Russ Coile who served on The Center for Health Design’s founding board of directors, this award recognizes individuals who, like Russ, have dedicated their careers to the advancement of the healthcare design field. 

When Jain decided to specialize in healthcare design in the 1970s, hospitals were grim places. "The word 'design' was not used in the same sentence as 'healthcare' because there was no design," states Jain. "There were simply white walls, grey VCT floors, cool white fluorescent lights. Families were considered 'outsiders' who were given limited access to patients and the patient was more like a prisoner--someone with no rights, little opportunity for input or participation."

A passionate advocate for changing the environment for patients, Jain used her background in psychology to understand what it meant to be a patient and photographically documented what she saw in these depressing environments. She wrote dozens of articles on this topic that were published in national magazines and found a ready audience. 

Starting out in the 1970's, there were no books and few articles on healthcare design and no Internet. Determined to make it easier for others, she wrote the first book on medical and dental space planning (1982), now in its fourth edition (2014), and the first book to propose a research-based approach to hospital design (Hospital Interior Architecture 1992) with the subtitle "Creating Healing Environments for Specific Patient Populations". At the time, the term "healing environments" was relatively unknown and hospital design was very generic. Jain gathered together research for each patient specialty and then provided application guidelines and examples of how the research could be applied.

"Looking at design through patients' eyes has always been the focus of Jain's work," states Debra Levin, EDAC, President and CEO, The Center for Health Design. "Her contributions to evidence-based design are immense, having authored several healthcare design books, including A Visual Reference for Evidence-Based Design, and being a part of the team who helped to write the first EDAC Study Guides. She also taught a healthcare design charrette at Harvard University Graduate School of Design for 14 years, and has been a Board of Directors member at The Center for over 25 years providing leadership and direction for The Center. Jain's contributions to The Center and to the healthcare design field are immense and for that we are grateful."

Jain will be recognized at The Center for Health Design's award ceremony on Monday, November 12 at Healthcare Design Expo & Conference in Phoenix, AZ.