What If the Building Is Part of the Treatment? Dr. Stephanie Taylor

A hospital that looked dirty helped Dr. Stephanie Taylor question what a healthy environment actually is. While working in Papua New Guinea, she expected poor infection outcomes amid cracked concrete floors, limited gloves, and conditions that seemed far less sterile than American hospitals. Instead, patients often did surprisingly well.

That experience helped send Taylor, a Harvard-trained physician, back to school for a master’s in architecture—and toward a career studying the largely invisible relationship between buildings and human health. In this conversation, she explains why dry indoor air can weaken our natural defenses within minutes, why eliminating microbes isn’t necessarily desirable, and how humidity, ventilation, building materials, and even dogs can influence the microbial environments that surround us.

Taylor makes the case for treating human health as a measure of how well a building performs—and for moving medicine further toward prevention.

Join Dr. Lisa Belisle for this conversation with Dr. Stephanie Taylor today on Radio Maine.