Healthcare Design - June/July 2020 - 28

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J U N E /J U LY 2 0 2 0

The check-in desk and
waiting lounge at the
critical assessment treatment clinic showcase the
project's nature-based
palette and finishes.

urban campus in downtown Columbus. That vision included space to accommodate everything
from outpatient, inpatient, observation, shortstay, and residential services to prevention and
research efforts to emergency and urgent care
services, including a pediatric crisis stabilization
department. A $50 million gift from Big Lots and
Big Lots Foundation helped enable the vision
to become a reality. NBBJ signed on as project
design lead, with Architecture+ overseeing programming and intial block planning as well as
providing mental health expertise.
L AY I N G T H E G R O U N D W O R K

Several sites were initially considered for the
building, including two others on campus as
well as a more suburban location similar to
most mental health settings, but ultimately
the team felt this particular parcel on the main
campus would best serve Nationwide Children's in establishing its new hub as the center
of its safety net of services, says Ryan Hullinger,
partner at NBBJ (Columbus). Reasons included
ease of access thanks to its location in the city
as well as relationship to other departments on
campus to take advantage of adjacent services
including academic, administration, and research integration.

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tall and 386,000 square feet, the
Big Lots Behavioral Health Pavilion at Nationwide
Children's Hospital opened in March in Columbus, Ohio, as the largest center dedicated to mental
health on a pediatric medical campus in the United
States. And while its presence and prominence were
strategic, it's the comprehensive programming the
building supports that defines the endeavor.
In 2015, leaders at Nationwide Children's began noting trends, not only
in services its own patients were increasingly requiring, but also in national
statistics-suicide among the leading causes of death in U.S. children, onehalf of mental health challenges established by the age of 14. "When you
look at those stats, you realize this is a huge problem in our country," says
Patty McClimon, chief strategy officer at Nationwide Children's Hospital.
"It was presenting to us in two ways. One was an influx of patients in our
emergency room and our medical beds who required mental health care
and, two, a feeling that these kids weren't getting the right treatment."
Nationwide Children's set out on a quest to solve that, recognizing the
necessity for both mental and physical health optimization in a comprehensive way-for example, the type of response frequently delivered for
cancer patients but that's been traditionally absent for mental health,
McClimon says. "Typically, for a cancer diagnosis, you'll see family support groups coming together and providing things like meal trains. But
for a mental health diagnosis, that kind of support is absent. We hope that
changes as we set out to break the stigma of mental health."
And while the organization had an existing and robust outpatient behavioral health program, this new path led to a much less traditional solution:
a large-scale building that would support a full continuum of care on its
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