The lighting in your home could be affecting your mood. If your home doesn’t get much natural light, you can still achieve an ideal level of daytime brightness with full-spectrum lightbulbs, says Kati Peditto, a psychologist in Denver and director of the Human Experience Lab at architecture firm Perkins and Will.

Advocating for federal policy to address the impact of climate change on mental health and health equity. Throughout the summit, participants listened to a series of panel discussions, the first of which focused on the impacts of climate change on health equity and mental health. Moderated by Kati Peditto, PhD, this panel featured Susan Clayton, PhD; Natasha DeJarnett, PhD; and Nancy Piotrowski, PhD.

This week, Bon talks with Kati Peditto about the psychology of indoor spaces, the function of healthcare spaces and the relationship between nature and healthcare outcomes.

How your space shapes the way you work. Kati Peditto, an environmental-design psychologist, says that regardless of age, there are a number of key environmental factors – both behavioural and physical – that can play a major role in job performance and satisfaction. “Sound is a big one because it really highlights a lot of the inequities we’re seeing in terms of remote work and productivity,” she says, noting that non-white and lower socioeconomic status individuals disproportionately live in places that have higher noise levels.

Today on Shared Space, I talk with Kati Peditto PhD, an award winning environmental psychologist. Kati’s research focuses on the social and psychological dynamics of space, and particularly on how to create spaces for adolescents and young adults with cancer. We address both universal and specific strategies for this patient population, and how we can all think of space for connection as a more natural and vital part of our lives.

Telework doesn’t suit every worker personality, environment. Surveys showing how much people like teleworking have a flaw: The respondents are often self-selected telework enthusiasts. Teleworking has some serious financial, career and social challenges, according to Dr. Kati Peditto. She joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

What is the impact of working remotely? Lack of structure and ‘unspoken’ human interaction may have long-lasting consequences. “Imagine you are a new hire in a new position. Lots of your development, your training, your experiences come from your informal interactions with other employees when you are in the office. So what happens when we lose those interactions?” says Peditto.

Generation Work-From-Home may never recover. “There are tons of studies on the positive benefits of teleworking, but most of that research is interviews and surveys with people who have self-selected into remote work,” says Kati Peditto, an environmental-design psychologist at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Recent studies explore facility design concepts for cancer care facilities. Peditto and colleagues bring a light to this area that has been largely overlooked. The study recognizes that AYAs with cancer (surprisingly defined as those between the ages of 15 and 39) often find themselves in pediatric cancer centers designed for much younger patients.

Adolescents and young adults (known as AYA’s) facing a life-changing cancer diagnosis have the added difficulty of treatment centers that are not designed to meet their unique needs. Peditto says, “If we can show that there’s clinical significance to the design of our built environment, that’s an incredible statement. It’s not a medication, it’s not something that is directly, physiologically affecting our health-related quality-of-life. It’s something that designers can control, not doctors.”

Design meets human development. How does being surrounded by such age-inappropriate designs impact patient outcomes and what can researchers learn from AYA patients to influence more effective design practices? “With the survey we found that the adequacy of the built environment and your feelings of social support were related to your health-related quality-of-life at a clinical significance,” Peditto said. “That is really exciting because health-related quality life has a billion different factors going into it – primarily whether or not you actually feel sick.”