A Culture of Well-Being

In a well-being culture, residents report good health, positive social relationships and the availability and access to basic resources like food, housing, education, jobs, and income.

Well-being doesn’t just happen on its own. It takes careful individual, family, and community cultivation of health- and wealth-promoting conditions and habits. As a community working together, we can create conditions, build bridges, and advocate for policies, systems and environments that enhance well-being across the life span.

Additional Information

Eastern Shore Healthy Communities offers the following Work Group opportunities to engage in Well-Being building. For more information, contact kigerpg@evms.edu.

Better Birth Outcomes partners prioritizes creating a strong start for children by ensuring that prospective parents plan their pregnancies, reducing racial disparities on low weight live births, and expanding outreach to pregnant women and first time parents.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion creates a dialogue within the community to inspire valuing, respecting, and supporting differences in cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic perspectives and experiences. It models leadership by creating tools for other organizations to emulate like organizational diversity statements and communication products that reflect our population in culturally relevant ways.

Food Access and Equity watches out for residents who are food insecure to improve equity and self-sufficiency among all Eastern Shore residents, especially children and the elderly by creating safety net systems for nutrition.

Healthy Options Restaurants is a branded restaurant program for locally owned and locally sourced restaurants to insure that diners have menu options that meet calorie and nutrient standards for a healthy meal.

Life-Long Wellness focuses on housing, internet usage, fitness, falls prevention, memory stimulation and personal interaction for senior residents and those with handicaps.

Livable Communities is a concept that emphases building health into communities by improving towns with infrastructure in place, adding multi-type and multi-income housing, insuring a range of retail, cultural and health improving shops and services are nearby, and emphasizes pedestrian-oriented transportation options. This work group has supported walking trails on existing town sidewalks to encourage walking, while seeing neighbors and friends and getting in some window shopping.

Resilient and Trauma-Informed Communities recognizes the ubiquity of trauma, the healing role of resilience, and seeks to transform the culture of employer organizations to be more aware of trauma among co-workers and customers (clients, students, patients, or parishioners), understand the impact of trauma on the brain and body and manifested behaviors, and actively create resiliency in the workplace with intentional actions of empathy and not re-traumatizing individuals.