The Center for Health Design’s board of directors has named Francis Murdock Pitts, FAIA FACHA OAA, as the recipient of its 2018 Changemaker Award. Pitts will officially accept the award and be the keynote speaker on Monday, Nov. 12, 2018, at the HCD Expo & Conference in Phoenix.

The Changemaker Award honors individuals or organizations that have demonstrated exceptional ability to change the way healthcare facilities are designed and built, and whose work has had broad impact on the advancement of healthcare design. As the founding partner and president of architecture+, Francis, (Frank), Murdock Pitts is an advocate, educator, and designer, and is internationally recognized for his impact on the design of healthcare facilities with particular recognition for his groundbreaking work in the planning and design of psychiatric facilities.

For nearly 40 years, Pitts has been a leader in a movement that has resulted in the re-imagination of the psychiatric hospital as a building type. He is a pioneer in the understanding and implementation of evidence-based design and therapeutic environments and is recognized as an advocate for broader dissemination of scientific evidence that healthcare environments have a profound influence on patient recovery. His House-Neighborhood-Downtown model for mental health facilities and the creation of smaller cluster-based residential treatment settings within larger inpatient units, are the product of extensive research, collaboration with clinicians, interaction with mental health patients and their families, continuing observation, and imagination about the potential for environments to support healing.