Exercising, sleeping, non-smoking, eating well, and… Indoor air has been overlooked in conversations about healthy living for too long. The average urban human spends 90% of their life indoors. That makes our building key drivers of our health. The way we design and operate our buildings can make us sick, or keep us well. We have been living in the sick building era by design and choice. But now, it is possible to usher in a new era where healthy buildings are the new norm for everyone, everywhere. By placing health as the north star in how we approach our buildings, we can transition to the healthy building era. New low cost measurement tools, research findings and a swell of public awareness are giving the movement momentum. This massive opportunity presents one of the greatest public health interventions of this century. Dr. Joseph G. Allen is an assistant professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He began his career conducting forensic health investigations of "sick buildings" across a diverse range of industries including healthcare, biotechnology, education, commercial office real estate and manufacturing. At Harvard, Dr. Allen directs the Healthy Buildings program and is a faculty advisor to the Harvard Healthier Building Materials Academy. He works with Fortune 100 companies on implementing Healthy Building strategies in their global portfolios. His work has been featured widely in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, National Geographic, Time, NPR, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Fortune and The New York Times. He earned his Doctor of Science (DSc) and Master of Public Health (MPH) degrees from the Boston University School of Public Health, and a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in Biology from Boston College. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx