BikeWalkLee's Margaret Banyan, Ann Pierce, and Darla Letourneau, along with representatives from the Naples Pathways Coalition, attended the Oct. 24th kick-off event, and will also participate in this week's community assessment process. Click here to learn more about the Collier County project. Below is the Oct. 25th Naples Daily News article about the kick-off event, along with our photos from the event.
By Liz Freeman
NAPLES,
Fla. - A 10-member team from the Blue Zones Project will spend the next two
weeks in Southwest Florida assessing the community’s lifestyle environment to
help local residents live healthier and have more fulfilling lives.
The NCH
Healthcare System announced Friday the launch of a Blue Zone initiative for
Collier and south Lee County, spearheaded by NCH president and chief executive
officer, Dr. Allen Weiss. The Blue Zones Project is a Minneapolis-based
organization that helps communities transform residents’ lives to be healthier,
happier and more connected to one another.
“We can
change our culture, we are poised to do it,” Weiss said Friday to 125 local
leaders at a breakfast on the campus of the NCH Downtown Naples Hospital to
announce the initiative.
The
Blue Zones project was launched after National Geographic’s explorer Dan
Buettner looked at communities worldwide where people live longer and wanted to
know why. He found nine “power principles” that included communities where
people are moving naturally in walkable neighborhoods, eat wisely, limit
alcohol intake, have time to down shift for meditating or napping, put family
first and belong in some way to a faith-based community.
Weiss
has been advocating the merits of the Blue Zone lifestyle over the past year
and has been nudging elected, civic and business leaders to get on board with
it. NCH sees the project as a 10-year initiative.
Tony
Buettner, vice president of product and business development for the project,
presented Friday an overview of how the project came into being after his
brother examined longevity in Sardinia, Italy and Okiniwa, Japan, where the
focus is on friends, family and downshifting.
“People
with higher well-being cost less and are more productive,” he said. “How do we
raise well-being? It’s all about evidence-based choices.”
The
Blue Zones group partnered with Healthways, a Nashville, Tennessee-based
company that provides support to companies and government entities to make
behavioral changes.
Albert
Lea, Minnesota, was the first pilot Blue Zone project in the United States. The
city added walkways and bike paths, and put healthier foods in schools and
grocery stores, among numerous other changes.
The
result, in terms of one measurement, has been a 49-percent decrease in city
workers’ medical claims, Buettner said. More school children walk to school
there and it is now safer for them to do so, he said.
The
governor of Iowa in 2011 launched a statewide initiative for Iowa to be a Blue
Zone. The city of Spencer was an early participant and now 58 percent of
residents exercise regularly and 13 local companies have become Blue Zone
worksites.
For a
project to work, there must be a commitment to change among community
policy-makers, schools, restaurants, grocery stores, work sites, the media, and
philanthropic groups, he said.
During
the assessment in Collier, Buettner said his team will be looking at each
sector locally, in part to determine the challenges.
“Is
there buy in? Do they want to do the work?” he said, adding that being a Blue
Zone community takes hard work and engagement.
Community
leaders left the kick-off event enthused. Some pointed out that the city of
Naples, with its emphasis on walkable neighborhoods near downtown and bicycle
paths, has a jump start.
“If we start in the city and prove what we
have done in the city, it may affect (others) in the county,” said Alan Ryker,
who co-founded the Naples Pathways Coalition Inc. several years ago to promote
bike paths and sidewalks. “I’m excited about the fact that we are thinking
about it.”
Collier
County manager Leo Ochs said the county can make policy decisions that help and
some decisions, such as putting in bike paths and sidewalks, and promoting
bicycling safety, dovetail into Blue Zone principles. The county has $250,000 a
year budgeted for sidewalks and bike paths, according to county staff.
“Those
are all compliment tie-ins to some of the concepts we heard,” he said.
Stephanie
Vick, administrator of the Florida Department of Health in Collier said many
groups have been working on various projects to promote better health for
years. The Blue Zones project will provide a strong focus and collaboration,
Vick said.
“The
synergy of all of us working together is exciting,” she said.
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