Hawaii’s largest health insurance provider is teaming up with a bestselling author to help communities here get healthier.
Hawaii Medical Service Agency joined National Geographic Fellow Dan Buettner, whose book, “The Blue Zones,” has created a template for communities to follow that leads people to more active lifestyles, making better food choices, spending more time in social pursuits and creating more walkable communities. The book inspired The Blue Zone Project, which has been initiated in 13 communities across the country.
Hawaii is a natural fit for the project, Buettner said Tuesday during a visit to Hawaii Island with HMSA President and CEO Mike Gold.
“There’s a cultural template that’s very easy to press into action,” Buettner said. “The concepts will resonate with how (Hawaii residents) grew up.”
The Blue Zones refers to geographic areas where people live longer than average lives. Okinawa, a region of Japan with strong ties to Hawaii, is one of those zones, Buettner said.
HMSA is offering to help select communities in Hawaii to be designated as Blue Zones. The process involves an application, an evaluation of the community, which typically needs to be somewhere with a critical mass of restaurants, workplaces, grocery stores, schools and the ability to set food policy, and then selection. Following the selection, a team hosts open community meetings in which 20 to 30 concepts that work in other communities that have successfully adopted the Blue Zone project are presented. Each community is asked to select 10 or so concepts to try to introduce in their area.
The goal isn’t to force the program on anyone, though, Buettner said.
“Our experience is that it’s best to take on the community most ready and show it works,” he said. “For every city we say yes to, we say no to four.”
For example, in the area of food policy, Buettner’s approach is to first ask people what works in their community. Then he asks what isn’t working so well. People will often own up to unhealthy food choices.
The project doesn’t just work with individuals. The approach also works with restaurants, getting them to consider menu changes such as offering fresh fruit as the default side for a meal instead of french fries. Buettner said because restaurants elsewhere in the country have already tested this approach, he’s now able to show restaurant owners how to implement the changes and reduce food wastes and costs at the same time.
Gold said HMSA wants to reshape the environment in which Hawaii residents live. The state has a reputation for having a generally healthy population and lifestyle, but HMSA is also seeing certain disease diagnoses increase. Half of the state’s residents are overweight, for example.
“At the broadest level, we’d like the entire state to be Blue Zone over a period of time,” Gold said.
HMSA has already committed to the program, taking steps to become the state’s first Blue Zone company. Employees have embraced the changes, which include introducing a farmers market at work and rooftop gardens.
If the program can work at a conservative organization such as a health insurance provider, it can work in the general community, Gold said.
“There is an appetite at the islandwide level, favoring healthy food, active lifestyles,” Buettner added.
The deadline to request an educational visit is Sept. 15. Statements of interest are due Oct. 31, site visits will take place Nov. 13 to 21 and community selections will be announced in January or February.
More information about becoming a Blue Zone Community is available at bluezonesproject.com or by emailing bluezoneprojecthawaii@healthways.com.
