Blue Zones Vitality Project

The town of 10,000 extra years

Albert Lea embraced the concept of “moai,” an Okinawan word for a group of people who support each other all their lives. The Vitality Project introduced “walking moais” to both get people moving and to bring them together. More than 700 people joined walking moai groups and forged new relationships with their neighbors.

When Minnesota explorer Dan Beuttner went to Sardinia he found, adjusting for population, 20 times as many 100-year-olds as in the United States. In Costa Rica, there’s a place where adults have the longest life expectancy in the world.

Beuttner calls these places Blue Zones and he learned four essential elements for a long and healthy life: make movement a natural part of your life, have the right outlook, eat wisely, and belong to the right tribe, meaning those with whom you share a common interest.

In 2009, Beuttner, along with SPH faculty and with sponsorship from AARP and United Health Foundation, applied those lessons to the people of Albert Lea, a town of about 18,000 in southern Minnesota. Could a 10-month pilot program called the Vitality Project really change the way people live? SPH epidemiology professor Leslie Lytle was co-director of the project and her colleague, epidemiology professor Jean Forster worked to change the environment to discourage smoking.

“We didn’t propose an Albert Lea Diet or an Albert Lea Fitness Program, we…[worked] with the community to make all the environments healthier,” says Lytle.

Albert Lea jumped in with both feet. The town quickly made changes to its infrastructure, like adding new sidewalks and creating a five-mile walking path around the town’s Fountain Lake in preparation for the experiment.

Lytle and team members visited families, schools, and workplaces to learn about eating habits and encourage more natural movement, like gardening, biking, and using the stairs. Local restaurants added more healthful foods to their menus, community gardens multiplied, and more and more people began walking and biking around the community.

On September 8, more than 3,000 people began a six-week online experience to up the health quotient in their daily routines, and, subsequently, more good years to their lives. Many of them took the Vitality Compass assessment to give them a baseline snapshot of their health and well-being. They would take it again at the end of six weeks to see how they did.

The Blue Zones experiment ended with a public celebration on Oct 16, 2009. It was more successful than imagined.

• Those who took the Vitality Compass added 3.1 years to their lives (the goal for the project was 2 years) and lost an average of 2.6 pounds.
• More than 700 people joined walking groups for exercise and social contact.
• Nearly 1,000 people took part in workshops aimed at helping them find their purpose in life.
• And two-thirds of local restaurants added food to their menus that increase longevity.

Albert Lea now considers itself a changed town, one that focuses on personal, social, and community health. In fact, the project has had such an impact that in August, the city council extended the principles of the Vitality Project indefinitely and will use them as guidelines for all future city projects.