Environment critical for Alzheimer’s care  
By Dennis Boggio, The Denver Business Journal, May 10, 1997

Designing special-care environments for Alzheimer’s residents is both a physical and social undertaking that has to begin with an understanding of the social and psychological needs of the resident. Only through this understanding can we provide design solutions and support systems that enhance the quality of life for residents. Creating a home-like environment with rooms and furnishings modeled after the single-family home is an important design objective for a therapeutic environment. The design should reflect the premise that the special-care living environment is a home, not an institution. All aspects of the development should be residential in orientation.  (click here for full text of article)
 

Aging: Small is Beautiful
The newest thing in end-of-life care: residences that look--and feel--like the house you've lived in all your life.
By   Claudia Kalb and Vanessa Juarez  With Nomi Morris
Newsweek August 1, 2005

It seems so obvious: let people age the way they have lived. Today, finally, it's beginning to happen. From upscale residences in California to family-size nursing homes in Mississippi, living facilities for the elderly are undergoing an architectural and cultural makeover: big, sterile institutions are out, small, homey environments in. The need has never been greater. Today 35 million Americans are over the age of 65--by 2030, that number is expected to double. As baby boomers age into sixtysomethings, the demand for civilized living will only intensify. "We have to completely transform the system," says Rose Marie Fagan of the Pioneer Network, an umbrella group for innovative aging programs. (click here for full text of article
 

Small World
The Green House: It looks like home and feels like home. It’s a new way of living when you need long-term care.
By Beth Baker AARP Bulletin October 2005

At first glance, there's nothing unconventional about the house. A curbside mailbox on a cul-de-sac in a new Tupelo, Miss., development marks the single-story residence, painted cream with blue shutters. A tall picket fence encloses a tidy yard with a barbecue grill, wind chimes and beds of flowers and tomato plants. 

It feels like home, a comfortable place to live, and this very ordinariness is precisely what makes the house exceptional. As part of the first wave of residences from the Green House Project, it's a reinvented nursing home—or more accurately, a new way of living for people who need long-term care. (click here for full text of article)
 

Comfort Homes offer personal care for Alzheimer’s in residential setting
Wichita Eagle, November 17, 1997

Parenting our parents is a reality that more and more families are facing. Alzhieimer's disease can be more devastating to the family trying to provide care than it is to the patient. "It was either send our Mother to a nursing home or try to take care of her ourselves. I thought at the time that surely there had to be a better way," says Charles Stark, founder of ComfortCare Homes. As a result, they came up with the concept of comprehensive nursing care in individual residences, to provide comfortable and familiar home environments for adults suffering from dementia.  (click here for full text of article)