Under the guidance of Vitality Quest, selected Vitality City communities will benefit from the combined capabilities and expertise of Blue Zones and Healthways. Blue Zones brings an unparalleled expertise in the understanding and promotion of human longevity and its successful translation into practice. Healthways' proven solutions for improving well-being for both individuals and entire populations will be supplemented with the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being IndexTM the official statistic of health and well-being for communities, employers and individuals to set a baseline in chosen cities and measure progress along the way.
Healthways has already achieved a tremendous amount of success bringing behavioral economic and clinical science to real world application, helping individuals better manage their health and well-being, said Leedle. We know that well-being is comprised of social, emotional and physical health, and this partnership affords us an opportunity to develop a wider set of community interventions and access to an impressive range of experts and proven techniques. The combination of our collective abilities as companies to engage whole environments will accelerate the achievement of improved well-being for entire communities.
The Healthways-Blues Zones Vitality Quest framework works because it is based on real practices of the world s longest-lived communities, and it doesn t involve the latest fad diet or exercise machine, Buettner added. We re encouraging people to make small changes in their lifestyles and behaviors that accumulate to have a big impact both on the length of time they can expect to live and the quality of life they can expect to enjoy in their present and later years. We re also changing communities, because it takes a community-wide effort on the part of government, employers, retailers, restaurants, schools, churches everyone to sustain and support individuals in their environments. It s a model that should be replicable in any city anywhere in the world.
Research is clearly showing a strong link between well-being, healthcare costs and engagement in the work environment. For a city, the achievement of higher well-being for its citizens yields competitive advantage for economic development and job creation. For employers, it means greater productivity and better health in the workforce and dependent families, resulting in better business performance. For individuals, it simply means living well, longer.
SOURCE Healthways, Inc.