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 occurring 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 living environment is tied to their health, wellbeing, and happiness. That’s 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.

Two organizations who have teamed up to assist the DOD to advance this Strategy are Corvias®, a long-time DOD partner under the Military Housing Privatization Initiative program, and VitacorpsTM, a science-driven company that specializes in indoor wellness. Corvias and Vitacorps embarked on their 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.”

Human-centered wellness interventions that consider the unique lifestyles of military families and the extraordinary challenges they face can positively impact recruitment, readiness, resiliency, and retention.

Clear Advantages

Addressing the quality of air, water, and light makes perfect sense since they all are so integral to our wellbeing. They are also areas that can often be improved relatively quickly and cost effectively with minimal disruption to families and their homes. For example, Corvias and Vitacorps installed air purification systems that can help reduce the presence of pollens, mold spores, and pet dander. Water filtration systems were deployed to protect soldiers and their families from harmful forever chemicals such as PFAS, toxins, and other contaminants. And, circadian lighting solutions that can promote better sleep by providing warm light in bedrooms were installed. These lighting solutions also provide residents with the option to turn on energizing light in the morning that can help them 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 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 managed by Corvias 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 wellbeing 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.

Fort Meade and Fort Liberty made history in 2024 as homes there became the first ever military housing units to receive WELL Residence certification from the International WELL Building Institute.

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 really put these in now with minimal disturbance. And we take care of everything. We do the assessment, we determine the solution, we source the solution and the funding. We can find a way to make it happen today.”

For more information about how WELL strategies can enrich the lives of military families, visit the Corvias Wellness Residential Program web site.

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1 Department of Defense Strategy for Resilient and Healthy Defense Communities. February 2024. Accessed September 19, 2024. https://media.defense.gov/2024/Feb/15/2003394891/-1/-1/1/RESILIENT_AND_HEALTHY_DEFENSE_COMMUNITIES_OSD008028_23_RES_FINAL%20.PDF.