Health District nears Vitality City agreement
It’s almost official: the Beach Cities Health District has won its bid to make Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, and Redondo Beach the next Vitality City.
The innovative preventive health program – which garnered national attention by measurably improving the health and projected longevity of Albert Lea, Minnesota residents in a cutting-edge citywide campaign – has selected BCHD to help launch an even more ambitious campaign in the beach cities.
Now it’s a matter of details.
The BCHD Board of Directors took the somewhat unusual step of working through those details publicly at a special meeting Monday night. The board vetted the proposed 18-page contract between BCHD and the parent company of the Blue Zones Vitality City Project, American Healthways. The agreement includes a commitment of $1.8 million from the health district over the course of the three-year project and $3.5 million from Healthways.
At the board’s instruction, BCHD CEO Susan Burden and chief medical officer Lisa Santora negotiated a set of performance goals that if not met will allow the district to stop funding the project. On Monday, the board added stipulations – most significantly, yearly audits that will be conducted by CFO Steve Groom at Healthway headquarters in Minnesota.
“We are a public entity. We have a responsibility,” said board member Joanne Edgerton. “And I don’t think it’s too much to ask.”
Over the course of three hours, the board discussed a range of issues, including intellectual property rights, the right to review Healthways’ employee salaries, and the naming of the project. They then unanimously voted to signal their intent to enter into the modified contract, pending Healthways’ agreement with the added stipulations.
“Suffice it to say we are not a rubber stamp,” said board member Noel Lee Chun.
Additionally, the board voted to hire a fulltime co-coordinator from within BCHD ranks who would be tasked with continuing the project after Healthways’ three-year term is over.
The Vitality City project grew out of a National Geographic study, led by author Dan Buettner, which examined lifestyles in areas in the world where people live 10 to 12 years longer than the American average of 77.9 years. The project uses an environmental approach to change – that is, making a community more pedestrian and bike-friendly, encouraging restaurants to incorporate menu changes by offering options such as smaller portions and fresh produce, and working with grocery stores to make healthier choices more apparent.
In just 10 months in Albert Lea, the 3,600 residents who participated in Vitality City lost an average of 2.6 pounds and increased their life expectancy by 3.1 years. Absenteeism among city and school employees dropped 20 percent, and health care costs of city employees dropped 49 percent.
Burden has expressed particular enthusiasm about gaining access to Gallup Poll’s well-being index, a measurement tool that cost $25 million to develop and is considered the most comprehensive measure of community health available. In a brief interview Tuesday, she also noted that every employer in the beach cities will have free access to Healthways’ workplace assessment, which helps find ways to make work environments happier and healthier.
Burden said early indications from Healthways were that all the added stipulations are acceptable. The project would likely begin next month after meeting final approvals.
“We have the opportunity to launch, in this community, probably one of the strongest innovations in health care right now, and one of the most needed,” Burden said. “If reflects on how if you can stay healthier in the first place, how that changes the whole health care system for a community…That is the underpinning of this.”
“Our society is so built on convenience, and staying healthy needs to be as convenient as possible,” Burden added. “I am just so excited we have a chance to build that into the architecture of the community.” ER