Pictured above: Dr. Carl Petersen, Chief of Mental Health Services, CHKD & Amy Sampson, President & CEO, CHKD
by Betsy DiJulio
Innovation is baked into the DNA of the CHKD Children’s Pavilion. But not innovation for its own sake; rather CHKD’s groundbreaking approach to comprehensive mental health care is for the sake of our region’s children and their families and caregivers.
Both outpatient and inpatient services began at the new 14-story Pavilion in downtown Norfolk in 2022, six months apart. As Amy Sampson, president and CEO of CHKD, explains, both their approach to the delivery of pioneering pediatric mental health care and the Pavilion itself are transformative.
The genesis of the Pavilion was an increasing and then exploding demand for mental health care for young patients at CHKD’s pediatric practices and emergency department beginning about a decade ago. The hospital can now care for children with dual psychiatric and medical conditions, dual psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions, and children under the age of nine, with programs for children with eating disorders and substance abuse issues in the works. Says Sampson, “In addition to acute inpatient care, CHKD offers a partial hospitalization program, an intensive outpatient program, outpatient therapy, emergency mental health services, and prevention/education programs.”
To house this revolutionary approach to mental health care for their youngest patients, CHKD turned to Array Architects, a firm specializing in healthcare design, with offices up and down the East Coast. Pat Malick, founding principal of the firm, explains that process-led design is their north star. It involves a deep dive into process before creating a solution.
What Malick describes as CHKD’s “huge vision” began with a close look at every activity within the institution. They facilitated visioning sessions which she describes as “design supports strategy supports mission,” weeks of empathy-building meetings with teams across operations, focus groups with the community, deep exploration and empathy mapping with the Patient and Family Advisory Council: “What should you hear, see, etc. every step of the way?”
The planning included stress testing the mock-ups of the physical spaces which were then tweaked and rebuilt, with safety the primary concern. They also looked outside the organization via benchmarking tours for staff across operational groups at peer institutions around the country.
Throughout the design process, the consensus was that the stigma around seeking mental health care needed to be broken. “Mental health care is health care,” as Malick puts it. One key strategy involves blending services, e.g. primary care, orthopedics, and mental health services to normalize the latter for parents and children.
The result of this meticulous planning was a facility with inpatient areas Sampson describes as “washed in abundant natural light,” while interior design elements such as floor tiles, wall paint, and furniture “feature a cheerful, calming palette of clear, bright colors.” Patient rooms, rather than staff offices, ring the outside of the building, each one featuring a large picture window with what Sampson describes as gorgeous views of the city.
Every feature of every private room and bath—layout, furniture, light fixtures, hinges, knobs, and more—supports safety, Sampson says, “without creating an oppressive, sterile environment.” And some features, such as blinds that open and close with controls contained within walls, lights whose color can be changed, and walls with interesting textures for the soothing comfort of sensory input, offer patients autonomy.
Communal areas provide myriad opportunities for recreation, creative expression, and positive social interactions. At the same time, the designers employed site lines, geometry, density, and flexibility to create secure zones that blend seamlessly within each unit.
With a mission to provide “Health, Healing, and Hope for all Children,” CHKD set out to create a facility where “the art of healing meets the healing of art.” From this guiding principle sprung a thoughtfully curated and integrated art collection that, as Sampson reflects, represents “reflection, transformation, and journey emulating the vital healing process we want for our children.”
From Malick’s perspective, the Pavilion was the “first project where art was so front and center.” Throughout the design process, one of the refrains was, “Where are moments when we can incorporate art?”
She recalls that all the artists’ whose work was chosen were open to learning about the mission and celebrating hope. One of those artists was Joe Wardwell. He chose to build his eye-popping mural around the mission statement. It reads like a giant woodcut print but one made of color-separated vinyl stencils and hand-applied paint. He wanted people to think about each word individually—health, healing, hope—before seeing the whole tagline.
Saturated in sunrise and sunset colors keyed to the hospital’s dominant palette, the wall mural is intended to be “welcoming, exciting dynamic, and vibrant,” but connected to the people who enter. With letters set against a slice of Virginia Beach landscape at the 1st Street jetty, the image oscillates between positive and negative space with radiance and luminosity. He notes, “It’s one thing to fill a building with art and another to make artists feel part of the community.”
And that sense of a healing community is very much by design. Says Sampson, “From the very beginning Children’s Pavilion was a deeply collaborative effort. We created a space that feels welcoming, comforting, and truly focused on the well-being of everyone who walks through its doors.”
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