Take a scenic tour on Kaiser Permanente's stairway

Climbing the stairs at Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Medical Center just got a lot more scenic. Giant full-color photo murals of Yosemite National Park, Stinson Beach, and other scenic Northern California locations greet stair-users at every landing.
They are a hit with staff and visitors.
“I get messages that people are wanting to use the stairs more often,” smiles Janet McCalmont, who is the Support Services Project Manager of the medical center, and manager of the project that covered the stairs with scenery.
“Maybe my mural project is helping people get more exercise by taking the stairs,” she said.
McCalmont says she got the idea from visiting Kaiser Permanente’s Walnut Creek Hospital, where a few large photo murals have been installed in the garage and some external stairwells. She thought murals like those could improve the blank, monochromatic walls of the Santa Clara hospital’s five enclosed stairwells.
“I got the OK first to experiment with a few murals in the Santa Clara parking structures,” says McCalmont. “People seemed to like them, but I knew I had a hit on my hands when I saw someone taking a ‘selfie’ in front of a waterfall picture.”
Working from a catalogue of approved photo murals, McCalmont, (who is second from the left in the group photo above) sought input from her colleagues about choosing the most appropriate pictures for the Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara stairwells. They selected local scenes like beautiful views of Muir Woods and Lake Tahoe so climbing the stairs from the basement to the fourth floor is like taking a little familiar trip.
“They’re quite large, 12-feet-high and 11-feet-wide,” says McCalmont. “So you really feel like you’re viewing the actual scene.”
The have an adhesive backing. A special smoothing material goes on the wall first and then the rolled up mural gets “pasted” onto the wall. McCalmont says the murals were developed by a retired Kaiser Permanente employee named Dick Eastman, whose hobby was nature photography.
McCalmont says the Kaiser Permanente “Total Health Environment” initiative helped support the mural project. Total Health Environment ensures member and staff wellness by physically building the promise of “Thrive” into Kaiser Permanente facilities.
“These murals really bring the outside inside since we don’t have windows in those stairwells,” said Dr. Susan Smarr, Physician-in-Chief of the Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Medical Center. “And they’re also encouraging people to take the stairs, which is great exercise.”