Susan Francis

3rd March 1952 – 29th April 2017
B.A., A.A. Dip., MARCA, AfH Programme Director

It is with great sadness and a huge sense of loss that we announce the peaceful death of Susan Francis on Saturday 29th April 2017.
Susan has been involved with Architects for Health since its beginnings, and more recently has been its Programme Director. Her contribution to the great success that AfH, the AfH Student Awards and the European Healthcare Design Congress currently have has been profound. She will be so greatly missed.

Our mission

Architects for Health (AfH) believes that the spaces of healthcare have an important effect on the well-being of patients, their friends and families, and that good design can positively influence patient outcomes.

We work to bring about well-designed and restorative health facilities, through enabling conditions for this change, both through our membership and with wider health institutions and communities.

By sharing ideas, experiences and examples, we are building knowledge networks that inform and support the future design of high-quality healthcare environments.
Find out more about us.

Join us!

AfH has a current membership of about 500 people who share our values across healthcare planning, design, and delivery. Become a member and get access to this expanding network.

Other benefits include early-bird access to events, information exchange and collaboration, CPD opportunities and support for ideas for AfH activities and projects.

Guidance

Healthcare design guidance – mainly Health Building Notes and Health Technical Memoranda – are a vital part of health facility design but this guidance is now increasingly out of date and suffering from lack of recent investment.

Architects for Health have taken the initiative and held an industry-wide Round Table in late 2016 to debate the future of guidance.

• The conclusions and recommendations from the Round Table were wide-ranging and the full report can be viewed here
• AfH were also asked to conduct a survey across the industry and all who use or have used design guidance are invited to take the survey here

Events

THE EUROPEAN HEALTHCARE DESIGN 2017 11-14 June 2017

VISIONING THE FUTURE: DESIGNING FOR CHANGE IN PEOPLE-CENTRED HEALTH SYSTEMS

Organised by Architects for Health with SALUS Global Knowledge Exchange
To book your place at Congress – register here.
The Preliminary Programme has been published – available here.
For more information…

Student Design Awards 2017

The AfH Student Design Awards challenge students of architecture and design to explore innovative and compassionate design for health and social care settings. The 2017 Student Design Awards will be launched shortly. For a brief outline of the Students Awards programme for 2017 please download this PDF
For the list of all the 2016 winners…

Previous events

AfH AGM 2017 23 Feb 6-9pm at RIBA
A short AGM Business Meeting including an announcement about the Draeger VisMed Roundtable for Visionary Medical Workplaces.

Followed by the Phil Gusack Talk – Our speaker this year will be Dr Patricia Oakley Director of Practices Made Perfect Ltd with a presentation on – “Do we need a new asset class? Will integrated care centres do the trick?”
To book your place…