Rachel Hodgdon

President and CEO of the International WELL Building Institute, where she leads work on the WELL Building Standard and advocates for healthier, more equitable buildings, schools, homes, workplaces, and communities. She previously worked at the U.S. Green Building Council and founded its Center for Green Schools.

Healthy Buildings Should Become the Baseline, Not a Premium Upgrade

At Aspen Ideas: Health, Joseph Allen, Rachel Hodgdon and Diana Araoz-Fraser argue that buildings should be treated as public-health infrastructure, not neutral containers for daily life. Their case is that the prevailing baseline still tolerates poor ventilation, weak filtration, chemical exposure, heat risk, inaccessible design and other hazards, even though technical fixes are already available. The remaining challenge, they say, is to make health a standard requirement in codes, retrofits and ordinary buildings rather than a premium feature in elite projects.

The Aspen InstituteJun 30, 202619 min read