ALLENTOWN, Pa. — An effort is underway to make Allentown a healthier place to live.
Lehigh Valley Health Network and the city are launching the “Blue Zones Activates - Allentown” project.
Blue zones are places in the world where people have the longest life expectancy. Now, a company with the same name, Blue Zones, uses evidence-based research to work with cities and towns across the country to improve residents’ overall well-being and make healthy choices easier and more accessible.
- Blue zones make healthy choices easier and more accessible to people in towns and cities
- Allentown teamed up with Lehigh Valley Health Network and a company called Blue Zones to improve the well-being of those who live there
- It's a multi-year, multi-million dollar approach
“We take lessons from the original blue zones on how to make the healthy choice, the easy choice in your community,” said Dan Buettner Jr., chief development officer for Blue Zones.
“The whole onus on health has always been on individual discipline, but individual discipline is a muscle, and muscles fatigue. The people in the Blue Zones, they don't have better discipline than we do, but they live in environments [where] they hang out with people, they dine at restaurants or grocery stores. Where they go to pray or they go to school, they're surrounded by the healthy choices that are the easy choice,” explained Buettner.
Over the next six weeks, Allentown is partnering with Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) to assess the city and see what they can change for the better.
"I think residents are committed to investments in social fabric."Matt Tuerk, Mayor, Allentown
Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk provided a tour of the city to leaders from Blue Zones and LVHN on Tuesday, to show them what is already working for the city and what can be improved upon.
“A lot of what they're proposing to do, at least initially, looks like policy decisions that we should be making at the city anyway,” said the mayor. “So, investing in more close-knit communities, investing in a built environment that supports an active lifestyle, and investing in food systems that support the health of our residents.”
Some of the ways suggested to improve health include creating community gardens or teaching people how to grow their own fruits and vegetables.
Said Tuerk: “Some of the recommendations are a natural fit for what we do in the city. We're health focused, we are focused on making sure that people have access to quality health care, they have educational opportunities and economic opportunities, making sure that their built environment supports a healthy lifestyle, and fundamentally making sure that the social context is there to support those healthy outcomes."
Dr. Brian Nester, LVHN’s president and CEO, said, “An example would be making good choices on what foods to eat, making sure those healthy foods are nearby and easy to access and part of your daily life making it easy to make good decisions.”
Blue Zones, which has helped to convert more than 70 towns, cities and counties across the U.S., will spend the next six weeks assessing the city. The company will provide a full report of findings.
“It's a multi-year, multi-million dollar effort, but if you compare that to the rising cost of health care, the rising costs of diminished productivity, it's a much better ROI [return on investment] than what we consider traditional sick care,” explained Buettner.
Funding for the project in Allentown will come from Lehigh Valley Health Network.
“Our mission is all about healing and comforting, caring, but that often means taking extra care of those people most vulnerable, that are challenged, if you will, with social determinants of health, socioeconomic issues, just challenges on a daily basis,” Nester said.
Said Tuerk: "I think residents are committed to investments in social fabric. The people in our city want ways to come together. They're invested in their networks. They're invested in supporting each other's health and so this is something that I think helps us support that.”
More information on the project can be found here.
