What is Blue Zones Project?

History of Blue Zones

Transforming Well-Being in Southwest Florida

Blue Zones Project and NCH are committed to making Southwest Florida a Blue Zones Community®, where people live healthier, happier lives. That means developing more engaged and more productive residents operating businesses focused on well-being, for themselves and for their neighbors. When the entire community works together, we can lower rates of obesity, smoking, and chronic disease and create a healthier, happier place for us all to live, work, and play.

Improve Personal Well-Being
We can make healthier choices in our own homes and personal lives, too. From moving naturally more often to eating more vegetables, from connecting to our neighbors to finding individual purpose in our lives, making small changes that impact your life daily, can add years to your life and life to your years.

Stand for Well-Being
Community policy has a big impact on healthy choices. Sidewalks, bike lanes, community gardens, mobile food markets, farmers’ markets and other community infrastructure affect our ability to move naturally, connect socially, and access healthy food. When we make sustainable changes to our surroundings, we can change behaviors and help our whole community lead healthier, happier, and longer lives.

Stock up on Well-Being
From farmers’ markets to grocery stores, healthier food options are increasingly needed across Southwest Florida. Blue Zones Project can help local grocers educate their customers on improving their family’s nutrition and provide easier access to healthful and tasty foods. Blue Zones Project can help local grocers increase traffic by making the healthy choice the easy choice. 

Put Well-Being on the Menu
Southwest Florida has plenty of choices when it comes to eating out. And Blue Zones Project can help restaurants offer even healthier choices to keep and attract more customers. By surrounding ourselves with like-minded people who are focused on healthier living, we can move from dieting fads to meaningful lifestyle changes and drive more traffic to the restaurants that are offering delicious, good-for-you menu options.

Get Schooled in Well-Being
We all know that healthier students do better in school. And learning about healthy choices isn’t limited to the classroom. Blue Zones Project shares best practices from around the country on how to instill better eating habits, increase physical activity, implement tobacco-free policies, and create a healthier school environment to help students and their parents form healthy habits for life.

Making Well-Being Work
We spend a lot of our time at work, so having healthy choices at our workplace is critical. Blue Zones Project offers programs and tools to worksites that will inspire employees to be happier and more productive and take healthy habits home with them. A healthier employee costs less, too. When workers feel physically and emotionally healthy and connected to their colleagues, they miss less work, make greater contributions, and have lower healthcare costs.

Community Assessment

Blue Zones Project Community Assessment took place between October 2014 and December 2014 with activities throughout the inland and coastal areas of Collier County and South Lee County. Blue Zones Project conducted a qualitative environmental analysis of the community and met with key local community leaders in order to create this assessment report summarizing the community findings that will ultimately be used to inform a phased implementation approach and specific community blueprints. The detailed assessment concludes Southwest Florida can be a viable Blue Zones Project community.

Download the full assessment report here.