In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Delos, a wellness real estate and technology company, has formed a collaboration with Humanity 2.0 Well Being and the Pontifical Orientale Institute to upgrade the Vatican’s Orientale’s residences with its evidence-based health and wellness technologies and solutions.
Rome and the Vatican are slowly emerging from lockdown, providing a critical window to help build health resilience, prevent disease and reduce viral transmission in houses, offices, parishes and school facilities through scientifically-supported technologies and solutions.
Delos, the trusted scientific authority on healthy buildings, has customized a program for the Pontifical Orientale Institute, which includes air purification and surface cleaning technology, circadian lighting and other evidence-based interventions designed to help support immune health, reduce stress, improve sleep quality and promote overall well-being.
In partnership with Humanity 2.0 Well Being, the wellness platform created in collaboration with the Vatican (Holy See), the Pontifical Orientale Institute was identified due to its rich history and innovative leadership, as well as vital role in convening global interfaith groups at the Vatican. Led by Rev. David Nazar, S.J, the Pontifical Oriental Institute was created by Pope Benedict XV in 1917, and is currently a school of higher studies that has as its particular mission the service of the Oriental Churches.
“The Catholic Church runs the largest governmental school system in the world, serving in over 100 countries – some over 1,000 years old – and runs one-quarter of the world’s health care institutions,” said Father David Nazar, Rector of the Orientale. “Its preoccupation has always been the care of the entire person and of society. Recent information technology and wellness sciences have brought to the fore much needed insights into humanizing the educational environment. Our students come from over 40 countries, many without deep resources, and student depression is an increasing phenomenon in a world that is struggling to find a common purpose. COVID-19 has shown us how fragile we are. With Delos and Humanity 2.0 Well Being, we will be implementing health and wellness tools that address these contemporary educational challenges, helping us continue our focus on strengthening the whole person- body, mind, and spirit. Pope Francis, with his focus on human ecology, has asked church institutions to show leadership. With Delos and Humanity 2.0 Well Being, the Orientale is doing just that.”
“We are honored to have been asked to customize our suite of research and technology solutions accrued over years into a first-of-its-kind program for the Pontifical Orientale Institute residences at this pivotal time,” said Paul Scialla, Founder and CEO of Delos. “We know that buildings have a profound impact on human health, but the current pandemic has magnified the essential need for evidence-based health interventions in the indoor environment, which are being shared with the Vatican and its global network.”
Given the Catholic Church’s global footprint, comprising 200,000 colleges, universities and other schools, 220,000 parishes, 117,000 nursing home and senior living facilities, and 10,000 orphanages in 196 countries, Delos’ Vatican program at the Orientale will be made available more widely to the Catholic Church to educate and shape institutional best practices.
“Through upgrading our educational buildings with health innovations, we are actually building human capacity at one of its most formative periods,” said Morad Fareed, CEO of Humanity 2.0 Well Being and a co-founder of Delos. “Father Nazar and the Orientale have a heritage as pioneers, and this initial partnership is both a template and a catalyst for greater strategic collaboration with the Vatican at this defining time.”
With the support of Pope Francis, and in conjunction with Fr. William Watson, S.J., vice president for advancement for the Orientale, the Orientale’s residences, offices, classrooms and library/conference facilities were significantly upgraded in 2017- the 100th anniversary of the Institute. These same residences will now become the first residences in the Vatican to implement Delos’ technologies and solutions.
The collaboration with Delos and Humanity 2.0 Well Being is advanced by the Orientale’s initiative to upgrade the technology infrastructure for all Orientale classrooms to enable the most comprehensive distance learning capabilities of any papal university, made possible through partnership with UBS partners James Mallahan and Mark Russo.
Delos is the founder of the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), which created the WELL Building Standard™, currently being implemented in over 4,000 projects, surpassing 500 million square feet of wellness real estate in 61 countries. IWBI recently established a Task Force on Covid-19 and other respiratory infections – Co-Chaired by 17th Surgeon General of the United States Richard Carmona, Former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation President and CEO Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, UCLA’s Dr. Jonathan Fielding, and Harvard School of Public Health’s Joseph Allen – to advance the role of buildings in protecting and enhancing health.
About Delos
Delos is a wellness real estate and technology company with a mission to be the world’s leading catalyst for improving the health and well-being of people by improving the indoor environments where they live, work, sleep and play. Informed by more than seven years of research and rigorous analysis of environmental health impacts on people, Delos and its subsidiaries offer an array of evidence-based technology and solutions for the built environment. Delos is the founder of the International WELL Building Institute and the WELL Building Standard, the premier standard for buildings, interior spaces and communities seeking to implement, validate and measure features that support and advance human health and wellness. The International WELL Building Institute administers and continues WELL’s development and drives market adoption. Delos collaborated with the Mayo Clinic to create the Well Living Lab, a scientific research center that uses exclusively human-centered research to understand the interaction between health and well-being and indoor environments. The company’s advisory board is comprised of leading professionals across real estate, healthcare, government policy and sustainability, including the 17th Surgeon General of the United States Richard Carmona, UCLA’s Dr. Jonathan Fielding, renowned wellness luminary Deepak Chopra, and sustainability advocate Leonardo DiCaprio. For more information about Delos, please visit www.delos.com.
About Humanity 2.0 Well-Being
Humanity 2.0 was created to facilitate collaborative ventures between the historically siloed public, private, and faith-based sectors. Founded in 2018 in collaboration with the Dicastery for Integral Human Development at the Holy See (Vatican) led by His Eminence Cardinal Peter Turkson, the Humanity 2.0 Foundation has become a unique global force in its novel ability to identify important global initiatives, forge partnerships, and introduce scientific solutions for global impact. After two years of convenings in Vatican City with global luminaries from Ethics, Science, Health, and Technology, Humanity 2.0 Well Being was developed to focus more concretely on installing the world’s leading environmental and maternal wellness solutions throughout the Faith Sector and beyond. https://humanity2-0.org/
About the Pontifical Orientale Institute
The Mission of the Orientale is to pursue research, teaching, and publishing relating to the traditions of the Eastern Churches – a geography spanning from Russia to Ethiopia and from Italy to India – in their theology, liturgies, patristics, history, canon law, literature and languages, spirituality, archeology, and questions of ecumenical and geopolitical importance. The areas of primary concern today to the Orientale are the Middle East and the post-Soviet world. For more information about the Orientale, please visit https://orientale.it/en/
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