Blue Zones Project®
Live longer,
better®
Blue Zones Project® is helping transform communities across North America into areas where the healthy choice is easy and people live longer with a higher quality of life.
Make the healthy choice the easy choice
Blue Zones Project is a community well-being improvement initiative designed to change the way people experience the world around them. Because healthier environments naturally nudge people toward healthier choices, Blue Zones Project focuses on influencing the Life Radius® — the area close to home in which people spend 90 percent of their lives. Blue Zones Project best practices use people, places, and policy as levers to transform those surroundings. Our communities have populations with greater well-being, improved health outcomes, reduced costs, and increased civic pride, all of which support healthy economic development.
+4.4%
Overall Well-Being Fort Worth, TX
+17%
Exercise Fort Worth, TX
-40%
City healthcare costs Albert Lea, MN
-25%
Overweight adults Beach Cities, CA
+48%
Increase in tourism Albert Lea, MN
-36%
Smoking Beach Cities, CA
*Survey is administered annually in all Blue Zones Project communities to calculate real medical and productivity cost savings. Results serve as a comparison to the cost of doing nothing.
Communities and their citizens are passionate about changing things for themselves and for their children’s future. We’re just lighting the lamps so individuals, businesses and local governments can see the path to long-term, meaningful improvement.
Twenty-year longevity study
How do you discover the world’s healthiest, longest-lived people? It all started with one man’s vision. National Geographic Fellow and explorer Dan Buettner traveled around the world to find where people lived the happiest, and the healthiest, the longest. He dubbed these areas “blue zones”, and published his results initially in National Geographic in 2005 — still the 3rd-best selling issue ever — and then a series of The New York Times bestselling books. These publications revealed the big insight of the original blue zones populations — which is that their environment supported their well-being.
A blueprint for living better
Blue Zones Project, a partnership between Blue Zones and Sharecare, helps communities accelerate transformation through a comprehensive set of solutions designed to improve overall well-being. These solutions have measurably lowered healthcare costs, increased productivity, and improved the quality of life for residents in those communities.
Since 2010, we’ve impacted more than 3 million lives in 50 communities across North America. Our unique, systematic approach improves well-being by focusing on the “life radius”, places where people routinely spend time: schools, restaurants, faithbased organizations, grocery stores, and worksites.
Blue Zones Project is not only for cities and communities. Sharecare can also work with employers to establish certified Blue Zones Worksites and Blue Zones Universities.
Certified Blue Zones Worksites have healthier employees with higher well-being who are more productive and less costly. Certified Blue Zones Universities have healthier students with higher well-being who are more engaged and have greater long-term life satisfaction.
We spend 90 percent of our time in the same places, and that environment dictates how easy it is to make healthy choices, or how difficult. By improving where we live, work, learn, and play, we make it easier to get up and move, eat healthy, make new friends, find a reason for being — and live longer, better.
The secrets to well-being and longevity are found in the Power 9® — nine common principles from the blue zones longevity hotspots of the world. They can be grouped into four categories. These principles are the basis for how Blue Zones Project impacts communities and makes healthy choices easier.
Move naturally
The world’s longest-lived people live in places that nudge them to move naturally. Working with city planners, schools, and worksites, we reshape communities so people naturally move more each day without thinking about it. We make it fun to leave home and participate in activities, enjoy an active commute, or easily walk to restaurants.
Eat wisely
People make hundreds of food decisions every day. We help make healthy choices easier. This means working with grocery stores, restaurants, and worksites to offer and bring attention to foods that are more nutritious and tasty. And schools to implement programs and policies that help children create healthy habits.
Connect
The people we surround ourselves with, even friends of friends, strongly influence our health. We create connections in a community — between individuals and community organizations, faith based and community groups, and other social activities — so you can easily connect with your right tribe. As we say, belong to live long.
Right outlook
Research shows that having a reason to wake up can help us live up to seven good years longer. Through mindfulness and purpose workshops, we teach people how to shed stress, live in the moment, and connect with their innate gifts. Then we help them find opportunities to match their passion with commitment to deepen their sense of purpose.
Certification as a Blue Zones Project worksite and as a certified Blue Zones Community® assists in recruitment and retention of motivated professionals who value health as an asset and who make resultant choices about where they work and live.
We’ve completely enhanced our quality of life. The impressive outcomes come as a direct result of Blue Zones Project resources and expertise coupled with local volunteers committed to sustaining our changes.
Why is being a Blue Zones Project school a good thing? Simple. I firmly believe that healthy children learn better. They behave better too.
Get to know
Blue Zones Project
Discover how neighbors, teachers, community leaders, and people just like you are transforming where they live, work, learn, and play so healthy choices are becoming easy for everyone in the community.