Design Your Environment. Change Your Life.
Our approach isn’t about changing your habits. It’s about transforming the places and spaces in which we live, work, and play so healthy choices become the easy, almost unavoidable, choices.
How the Blue Zones Approach Works
See how intentional changes to everyday environments can lead to measurable, long-term impact across entire communities.
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 80 percent of their lives.
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.
Life Radius® Model
We take a unique, systematic approach and focus on the policies, people, and places within our “life radius” (the area close to our home, schools, and workplaces where we spend 90 percent of our lives).
By making permanent and semi-permanent changes in the environments where we routinely spend our time, healthy choices become easier and people naturally adopt the behaviors that lead to habits that improve well-being.
Three Levers That Drive Lasting Change
We work to create healthier communities where well-being is woven into the fabric of daily life, so that every resident and visitor enjoys a better quality of life. We aim to do this by improving the following sectors: Places, People, and People.
People
Blue Zones engages people in activities that change mindsets and habits in lasting ways. We provide individuals with tools, tips, and resources that empower them to transform their lives so that healthy choices become the easy choice.
Places
From restaurants to schools, we work with local organizations to help make healthy choices easier in all the places we spend the most time.
Policy
We work with local leadership to enact policy that changes the environment for positive and sustainable impact.