About Blue Zones Project Jacksonville
Healthier Environments Naturally Nudge People Toward Healthier Choices.
Residents of the original blue zones areas make healthy choices because those choices are easy—even unavoidable—in their surroundings. That’s why Blue Zones Project focuses on influencing the life radius, the area close to home in which people spend 90 percent of their lives. In Blue Zones community transformations, we optimize the built environment, municipal policies and ordinances, restaurants, schools, grocery stores, faith-based organizations, and workplaces, social networks, habitat, and inner selves.
Our work is rooted in lessons learned from the world’s longest-lived cultures. We translated these lessons into environmental changes that strengthen social ties, reshape places, and sharpen policies to support healthy choices. We are a community-wide project, with a strategic focus on zip codes 32206, 32208, 32209, 32210, and 32244.
Schools have long been one of the most important factors in helping kids make good choices about eating well and staying healthy. And Blue Zones Project offers school leaders programs and policies that make it easier to teach students how they can lead longer, happier lives.
We work with grocery stores in our communities to help them make simple changes in their stores to nudge their customers into making healthier choices—like more healthy food options and a more health-conscious store layout.
Restaurants play an enormous role in a community’s overall diet. So we help local eateries optimize their dining experiences (e.g., highlighting nutritious menu items and removing salt from tables) to encourage patrons to make healthier choices.
In long-living populations, pursuing faith activities has been found to be a key factor to greater longevity. Faith leaders can have great influence in a community, so we help spark new energy and excitement for focusing on the physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being of their members.
Blue Zones Project partners with community employers to create healthier work environments. This, in turn, empowers employees to be happier, healthier, and more productive. The benefits to employers are many, including increased productivity and a potential savings in healthcare costs.
Nearly every type of organization can utilize Blue Zones Project principles to cultivate healthier and happier customers and members. And more vibrant, engaged patrons lead to a healthy business bottom line. It’s a win-win for everyone!
