Vitality City Survey: Residents Healthy, but Stressed

While the results of a new survey show that Beach Cities residents are healthier and happier than those in other communities, they are also stressed, worried and angry enough in their lives to cause concern for their health and well-being.

The vast majority of people in Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach are thriving, according to a Gallup-Healthways survey. They enjoy access to health care, insurance and healthy foods.

But the “good news” findings reflected in the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index that stemmed from the study are tempered by signs that local residents still face health challenges—and more work is needed to promote better community health, said John Harris, chief wellness officer of Healthways.

“There are certainly issues in the emotional health area that I think raise concerns for all of us, certain behaviors that we think are worth noting,” Harris said. “Certainly some of the areas of physical health could be better.”

The survey is an important benchmark that will kick off the district’s Vitality City initiative, said Dr. Lisa Santora, chief medical officer of the Beach Cities Health District.

The program is a three-year effort to improve health by promoting better health practices in the community.

“People here think that they’re healthier than they really are,” Santoro said. “We have a great perception that we are a very healthy community and the data that we found out shows that there truly are areas for improvement.”

Santora and Harris were among a panel of presenters Thursday who unveiled the results of the Well-Being Index, which measures a community’s state of health by polling residents and questioning them about a half-dozen health-related areas.

In telephone interviews, Beach Cities residents were asked about their emotional health, including questions about stress and significant worries; their physical health, including whether they were ill or had chronic ailments; and their work environment, including relationships with their supervisors. 

People were questioned about healthy behavior, such as whether they eat fruit and vegetables, exercise or smoke. They were asked about their access to clean water, health care, health insurance and a safe place to exercise.

And they were asked to evaluate their lives by placing themselves from 1 to 10 on a scale to measure if they are currently “thriving, struggling or suffering” and where they see themselves in five years.

The survey of 1,332 Beach Cities residents was conducted from Sept. 30 to Nov. 27 last year. Among its major findings was that the overall well-being rating for residents of Manhattan, Hermosa and Redondo was higher than the California average and above the top tier of other cities. 

More than 90 percent of local residents said they had access to health care, health insurance and enough money for food, shelter and other basic needs. Two-thirds were found to be “thriving.”

But the survey also found that about 34 percent of local residents saw themselves “struggling” and 46 percent of the Beach Cities residents felt stressed for most of the day, a number that ranked them 176th out of 188 communities surveyed. 

When asked if they had significant worries, 37 percent said they did, which ranked the Beach Cities 177th out of those 188 locales polled. When asked if they were angry for much of the day, 16 percent of local residents said they were.

Sixty percent of Beach Cities residents considered themselves obese or overweight, 25 percent have had high cholesterol and 23 percent have had high blood pressure.

The survey was similar to a nationwide Well-Being Index that Gallup conducts daily in partnership with the Healthways organization, said Daniel Witters, a principal with Gallup Consulting. 

He added that the Beach Cities findings had a 2 1/2 percent margin of error and called the survey “as good as it gets when it comes to measuring well-being.”

Breaking Down the Numbers

The release of the local survey results is a prelude for a blueprint for the  that will be unveiled to the public this week. 

The initiative plan is viewed as the next step in the project that is designed to make a difference in individual and community health.

Vitality City, which is part of Healthway and Blue Zones, an organization that seeks to increase longevity by improving lifestyles, is partnering with the Beach Cities Health District on the initiative.

The group will be making recommendations that could affect traffic patterns, bicycle lanes, park safety, schools, groceries and restaurants as a way of influencing the health of local residents, said Dan Buettner, an author and founder of Blue Zones.

Other suggestions for residents when they're at home are to use smaller dinner plates to reduce how much we eat and to jettison the remote control to encourage physical exertion.

The group will suggest changes in lifestyle, municipal policies, business practices and other methods that have worked elsewhere, Buettner said. But this marks the first time that so many avenues will be pursued on such a large scale. A pilot project in the Minnesota town of Alberta Lea has shown promising results, he said.

“We are bringing silver buckshot to this community,” Buettner said of the multi-pronged approach that will be used in the Beach Cities.

“The key at the end of the day is going to be optimizing this environment, the environment we live in,” he added.

Healthways is contributing $3.5 million to the project while the Beach Cities Health District has provided $1.8 million, said Susan Burden, chief executive officer of the health district.

In putting together the Blue Zones Vitality City program, organizers have worked with 35 elected officials across the three Beach Cities and every school board has had the opportunity to be involved, Burden said.

Last year, Beach Cities Health District saw 4,000 people who did not have health insurance and is trying to be the “come-to place” for those lacking insurance, she said, and that underscores having to innovatively meet local health needs.

“We’re trying something new to bring this environmental approach on top of what we’re already doing,” she said. “Since health is our mission, we believe it’s what we owe the community.”