Blue Shield of California is encouraging its members to live like those in “blue zones” by offering access to the Blue Zones Challenge App, the insurer announced last week. Blue zones are regions in the world where people live longer and healthier lives.
The term was first created by Dan Buettner, a National Geographic explorer and journalist. Buettner and his team traveled around the world to research communities where people lived longer and had a higher quality of life. They identified five blue zones: Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Ikaria, Greece; and Loma Linda, California. The company Blue Zones, which was founded by Buettner, now works to help cities, communities, organizations and employers live healthier lives.
The Blue Zones Challenge App was co-developed by Blue Zones and Blue Shield of California. Blue Shield of California members are able to access the app through the insurer’s digital lifestyle medicine platform called Wellvolution, which includes solutions for mental health, diabetes, hypertension and other conditions.
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On the app, members will complete an assessment on their longevity, happiness, nutrition and purpose. They’ll then be able to track their blue zone activities, like going on a walk or eating a cup of beans. The activities all have a point value, and members will aim to achieve 400 points each week. The app is free to Blue Shield of California members.
“The Blue Zones Challenge App is really meant to help people take inventory of their own little life radius, and to make those little tweaks, those best practice tweaks, so that they’re setting themselves up for success,” said Dan Buettner Jr., son of Dan Buettner and a Blue Zones executive vice president & chief development officer, in an interview.
The app also has a true vitality and true happiness test to help members track their progress.
“People like to have a score or a benchmark or something to track progress and to track outcomes and actually it’s important for us as well at Blue Shield to sort of look at the members who are using it and seeing if they’re improving,” said Angie Kalousek Ebrahimi, senior director of Lifestyle Medicine at Blue Shield of California, in an interview.
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Blue Shield of California made this app available for members after a pilot program of 1,000 participants. The pilot found that 99% of participants experienced an improvement in their well-being, according to the announcement.
The insurer chose to offer the app to help members achieve healthy lifestyles through methods that have proven to be effective, according to Kalousek Ebrahimi.
“I think blue zones are one of the most tangible, accessible models that people at large can just use to start guiding themselves,” she said. “I think there’s so much information out in the world about health. You go through your Instagram feed and every five minutes there’s a new supplement or you should be doing this type of workout. The truth is, Dan Buettner and [Dan Buettner Jr.] … have done a lot of the work to see what is working to help people live longer and healthier. [These actions] are very simple. They are not all physical. They are mental. They are social. They’re about connection.”
She added that health plans traditionally focus on sick care, in which patients are treated after they’re already sick. With the Blue Zones Challenge App, she hopes to “redefine what it means to be a health plan to actually care for people’s health from the get-go.”
Blue Shield of California is the first insurer to offer the Blue Zones Challenge App. When asked if Blue Zones plans to partner with additional insurers in the future, Buettner Jr. said the company is “on a mission to partner with everyone everywhere to bring the lessons of the world’s longest-lived people.”
Photo: kate_sept2004, Getty Images