Most of us read in February that Wisconsin improved to 14th from 20th in the last Gallup/Healthways annual ratings of Population Well-Being, but buried within that report are some interesting points.
The ratings are based on phone interviews with 176,000 people (3651 in Wisconsin), and look at six key areas, only one of which is Physical Well-Beiong (Wisconsin was 18th). The others: Life Satisfaction (25th), Healthy Lifestyle Habits (19th), Work Environment Satisfaction (primarily treatment by supervisors, 26th), Emotional Health (10th) and Access to Basic Needs (6th).
Iowa was singled out as having the most comprehensive official approach to improving health; they embrace a Blue Zones (www.bluezonesproject.com) process that was pioneered by Healthways, a disease management organization.
Among other points regarding how to be successful:
• You need high ratings in (1) learning new and interesting things daily, which meets an important psychological need, and (2)workers using their strengths, resulting in high physical and emotional health, and (3) safe places to exercise.
• For the most part, said the research director, well-being goes up with income (especially for the emotional well-being factor). They hit their peak at about $75,000 a year, and don’t get better after that. Also impactful, even if incomes arren’t high, are educational attainment and low unemployment.
• “Be it politicians, executives, clergy, school principals, grocery store managers or community activists, a well-informed and active leadership is crucial to a state’s success at building an institutionalized, embedded, and sustained well-being culture. …. including a shared and uniform definition of well-being, constant and public vigilance in its advocacy, and a clear message that commitment to it … will never, ever go away.”
The top states: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota and Montana. The worst: West Virginia, Kentucky and Mississippi.
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