Imagine you’re stationed halfway around the world and you learn your hometown’s air quality is causing your child’s asthma to act up. Or you hear that your family’s water supply is tainted, forcing them to spend limited grocery money on bottled water. No doubt, that kind of news would elevate your stress and weigh heavily on your mind, potentially impacting your job performance. Unfortunately, the chances of such scenarios are increasing for service members and their families as military installations age.
Partners On a Mission
The DOD recognizes how closely a military family’s home environment is tied to their health, well-being, and happiness. That prompted the Department to make enhancing the quality of military communities a priority, adopting a comprehensive Strategy for Resilient and Healthy Defense Communities. The stakes are high. The DOD realizes that providing an exceptional living experience is critical to recruiting and retaining a strong, healthy, and ready military force.
Corvias has teamed up with VitacorpsTM, a science-driven company that specializes in indoor wellness, to assist the DOD in advancing this strategy. We embarked on our mission by using a human-first approach fueled by proven science to identify the best path to follow.
“We conducted assessments of the houses and the environment to determine what we could do to bring effective wellness interventions to the service members and their families,” said Vitacorps president Rob Bellmar. “What are the current baseline results when we test? What’s the right science-backed solution that will have the most impact on residents there? What is the budget? What can we do? The answers to these questions pointed us to interventions focused on air, water, and light.”
Clear Advantages
Addressing the quality of air, water, and light makes perfect sense since they all are integral to our well-being. They are also areas that can often be improved relatively quickly and cost-effectively with minimal disruption to families and their homes. For example, the installation of air purification systems can help reduce the presence of pollens, mold spores, and pet dander. By adding water filtration systems soldiers and their families can be protected from harmful forever chemicals such as PFAS, toxins, and other contaminants. And, circadian lighting solutions can promote better sleep by providing warm light to the bedrooms where installed. These light enhancements can also provide residents with an option to turn on energizing lights in the morning which can help the residents wake up and start their day by stopping melatonin production. Air, water, and light investments like these continue a long line of ongoing efforts made by Corvias aimed at important quality-of-life issues that affect military families, including nutrition, physical activity, mental health, and a sense of community.
“It was a very thoughtful process,” said Denise Hauck, Corvias senior vice president of property operations. “We took the time to do the testing and find what the best solutions were for our locations and our residents and their lifestyles, what they particularly needed to achieve maximum wellbeing.”
It’s Working
So far, 50 homes at Fort Meade and Fort Liberty have been upgraded and certified by the International WELL Building InstituteTM (IWBI). These homes are the first military housing units ever to receive the prestigious WELL Residence certification, which validates that evidence-based solutions have been implemented across key categories, including air and water quality, thermal comfort, lighting, and other critical indoor environmental quality factors.
“By focusing on the health and well-being of service members and their families, Corvias is raising the bar for military housing,” said Rachel Hodgdon, president and CEO of the IWBI. “We applaud Corvias for this milestone achievement.”
Most importantly, the residents are happier. A survey of Fort Meade residents found an 82% increase in satisfaction with their housing after the upgrades there.
Moving Forward with Confidence
The early success of Corvias’ Wellness Residential Program proves that significant, life-enhancing improvements can be made to the DOD’s full inventory of homes sooner rather than later.
“One of the great things about the types of technology we’re putting in is they can be installed today,” Hauck points out. “You don’t have to wait until major renovations are needed that will displace a family. You can put these in now with minimal disturbance. And we take care of everything. We do the assessment, we determine the solution, and we source the solution and the funding. We can find a way to make it happen today.”
Visit our Wellness Residential Program page for more information about how WELL strategies can enrich the lives of military families.