Long term care and the coronavirus pandemic: a new role for environmental design in a changing context

Abstract

First paragraph: It took more than three decades of championing the principles of environmental design for dementia and developing the research evidence base on how the physical environment can support the independence and wellbeing of people with dementia to reach a point where cognitively supportive design should be the default requirement for new and existing long term residential care facilities. It has taken a fraction of that time for an emerging coronavirus to displace concern with residents’ lived experience in favour of strict transmission and infection control measures, forcing a return to more institutionalised and medicalised environments and care practices.