When interior designer Jillian Pritchard Cooke was diagnosed with cancer, her doctors told her it may have been tied to her environment. This prompted Cooke to create Wellness Within Your Walls, an educational organization for trade pros, manufacturers, and consumers.
Pritchard Cooke is now cancer-free, and seeks to meet building professionals and homeowners where they are in their health and wellness journeys, writes Professional Builder contributor Stacey Freed for Forbes, to help them find ways to improve their homes, workplaces, and products. Pritchard Cooke says she wants to “promote health and wellness and leave a legacy of increasing life expectancy." The Environmental Protection Agency has consistently named indoor air quality as a major environmental and public health risk.
WWYW’s first efforts began with manufacturers and building professionals. Turns out that promoting wellness is a good business strategy. According to the Global Wellness Institute, the global wellness economy was worth $42 trillion in 2017. While “wellness” is a big umbrella when it comes to its definition, about $134 billion of that figure represents wellness real estate—environments that intentionally incorporate health-focused elements in their design.
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