Effectively addressing inequity is quintessential for a healthy and productive society.
Health and wellness have been defining issues in the United States. The added stress of COVID-19 has highlighted and exacerbated these imbalances not only for healthcare access and quality, but also for social injustice and civil unrest within communities.
Frighteningly, the most stressed communities have become the epicenters for additional tragic events. Multigenerational inequality, geospatially identifiable within regions, accelerates further degradation of already fragile neighborhoods.
Disparities among and within communities with respect to rates of COVID-19 incidence, prevalence, morbidity, and mortality are astounding. These differences link closely to the negative pre-existing social determinants of health. Societal stress exacerbates housing instability, food insecurity, social isolation, prejudice, and discrimination. The poor folks already suffering at the bottom of the resource pyramid lack the ability to respond to worsening conditions.
Fortunately, addressing policy in Blue Zones Project communities has effectively ameliorated many long-standing obstacles. Influencing local governments to include public transportation, sidewalks, safe street crossings, and other worthwhile accoutrements when planning or redesigning communities has been proven repeatedly to be objectively beneficial.
Including residents’ input into the planning process pays huge dividends. In Texas, one of Ft. Worth’s most challenged neighborhoods was a relatively unsafe food desert. Encouraging a local, small-business owner to bring in fresh fruits and vegetables to his corner store and having local high school students redecorate the building’s exterior, in addition to other changes in the neighborhood, resulted in the greatest improvement in Ft. Worth’s entire Blue Zones Project journey. Even the local police noted a marked decrease in crime rates.
Proven solutions exist; communities that have adopted Blue Zones Project’s methodologies to improve individual, organizational, and community health have realized remarkable results. Blue Zones Project has positively impacted more than 4 million citizens in more than 55 communities across North America. Through a combination of high-tech solutions for individual behavioral change and the People, Places, and Policy framework for environmental change, Blue Zones Project can sustainably impact whole communities so that good health and well-being occurs naturally.
