The collaboration reimagines the mall as a wellness center | Cornell Chronicle

In the empty former Ulta Beauty space at The Shops at Ithaca Mall, the eye-catching displays on a recent Saturday featured not cosmetics but brightly colored sticky notes, magic marker drawings, index cards, tape, thread, pipe cleaners and Play-Doh.

Armed with these art supplies, more than 60 community members, nonprofit leaders, Cayuga Health System representatives, and Cornell faculty and students envisioned a mall makeover by collaborating on ideas that could help transform the underutilized property into a hub for community health and wellness.

The prototypes they developed at the April 12-13 reimagining workshop, The Mall for Health and Community, depicted walking routes around and through the mall; teams of health advocates (human and robotic) and a navigation center with fireflies; classroom, library, dining room and play areas; natural spaces that replace a parking lot; plus a garage and affordable housing complex.

People come up with ideas that they think will be more supportive of human functioning, and we don’t judge them as feasible or not, because anything can be feasible, said Mardelle Shepley, a professor in the Department of Human Centered Design at the Faculty of Human Ecology. CHE). The question is, what will we recommend to happen in this mall? How could this mall be more successful and more supportive of the community?

Presented in the style of a design letter, the workshop was co-hosted by Cayuga Health System, the Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures (CIHF), a partnership between CHE and the Cornell Nolan School of Hotel Administration and the Cornell Jeb E Brooks School of Public Policy. Spearheading the initiative were Lara Parrilla 99, manager of community and academic collaboration at Cayuga Health Partners, visiting professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine’s Master of Public Health program and associate co-director of the Cornell Center for Health Equity; Julie Carmalt, MS 08, Ph.D. 09, tenured professor at the Brooks School and associate director of the Sloan Program in Health Administration; Jennifer Turck, assistant vice president of operations for Cayuga Health System; and Shepley.

Cayuga Health System has become a major presence in the mall since purchasing nearly 120,000 square feet for medical offices (in the former Bon-Ton); the planned Cayuga Health Professions Learning Center (in the former Sears); and a medical equipment business. Dr. Martin Stallone, president and CEO of Cayuga Health, said he envisions a number of partners locating there to provide more effective and equitable care, along the lines of so-called health malls or villages which are gaining popularity all over the world. country

We strongly believe that collaboration is very important to reach populations and make a difference in people’s lives, Stallone said at the start of the event. First, they were very interested in learning what the community said were their needs.

To better understand and prioritize these needs, the Cornell team proposed the reimagining process facilitated by Troy Savage, director of strategic projects and innovation at engineering firm Mazzetti and the Sextant Foundation. The multidisciplinary, multistakeholder approach emphasizes empathy, listening, teamwork, creativity, and blue-thinking without budget constraints, zoning regulations, or other potential obstacles.

Attendees gathered at nine tables combining skills and life experience. They included residents and community organizations knowledgeable about health equity challenges, including the Family Reading Association, the Southside Community Center, the Visiting Nurse Service, and the YMCA of Ithaca and Tompkins County; physicians and healthcare leaders; local elected officials; mall representatives; and an interdisciplinary mix of Cornell participants with expertise ranging from health policy and administration to human-centered design, architecture, and hospitality. Several dozen undergraduate and graduate students were part of the Shepleys Health and Healing Studio and Carmalts Designing for Health Equity courses.

One group prototyped Health City, including indoor and outdoor trails potentially assembled during community-building events, exercise equipment and a children’s play area, along with an apartment complex bordered by an orchard. The inspiration came from a family with an incarcerated parent.

All of this is structural support for the most impoverished members of our community to sustain and build, so we have a healthier society, said Taili Mugambee, program director of Ultimate Re-Entry Opportunity, a Cornells project Center for Transformative Action. which helps people facing incarceration and the formerly incarcerated. If we took care of the health of these towns, an added value would be brought to the community that would offset the cost.

Another group explored ways to help people navigate complex health and social service systems by imagining a cancer patient who needed support. His proposal, or core of ideas, as Savage called it, emphasized health advocates and educational outreach to facilitate connections and care.

This commercial space can be designed as a community center where people can come in, see people and get support, and that’s also a form of health care, said Madeline Lei 23, a master’s student in health administration and member of the team It was interesting to explore the different ways something could go and then see it come together on paper in one day.

Savage applauded the contributors for generating constructive ideas in such a short time.

My hope is that we can take them and, together, reimagine what it’s like to build and rebuild our community, Savage said, and learn to break down the barriers that prevent us from taking care of each other the way we want to.

Parrilla said some common themes among the groups improve navigation and access, and infusing more natural and welcoming spaces into the mall would help advance preliminary concepts gleaned from a wide range of perspectives.

Advancing health equity requires us to work across disciplines and the voices of the downtown community, and today we had a formula to achieve that, he said. It’s important for the community to feel responsible for the changes that can happen here, and this is just the beginning.

Carmalt said the reimagining effort had reinforced the value of engaged learning and collaboration with the community.

We have a group of students who have energy and understand the importance of learning by doing something positive that is not for the community, he said. I think we can take the ideas we’ve generated here and continue the campus-community partnerships to implement some of them and I can’t wait.