Palm Springs launches Blue Zones Initiative aimed at healthy living, Coachella to follow

The city of Palm Springs officially launched its Blue Zones Project Tuesday in an effort to improve community well-being, health, happiness and connectivity for residents, potentially leading to longer lives.

The city has joined forces with the Inland Empire Health Plan Foundation, Eisenhower Health, Kaiser Permanente, Molina Healthcare, Riverside University Health System-Public Health and Riverside County to launch this coordinated effort. Initial plans to work with the Blue Zones Project began back in 2021.

Riverside University Health System-Public Health funded an initial Blue Zones feasibility assessment last year to determine the readiness of various communities in Riverside County. Now, a total of five Blue Zones initiatives are simultaneously launching in Riverside, Banning, Coachella and Palm Springs, while Mead Valley begins a policy-focused Blue Zones Activate.

The City of Coachella's project will launch Jan. 7, according to Mayor Steven Hernandez.

Blue Zones research examines areas of the world where people live much longer than average. Ikaria, Greece; Okinawa, Japan; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Sardinia, Italy; and Loma Linda, California, are considered blue zones by the company. The team behind the Blue Zones Project has taken the lessons they've learned from those areas and worked with communities in the United States to implement healthier initiatives.

Teams of scientists found the five blue zones share nine characteristics that contribute to longer lives:

• Movement is more natural

• Residents know their purpose

• They have routines to de-stress

• They stop eating when they’re 80% full

• They don't eat as much meat

• They have one to two glasses of wine a day

• They belong to faith-based communities

• They keep family close

• They find social circles that support healthy behaviors.

In July, the Palm Springs City Council approved allocating $180,000 over a three-year period to participate in the Blue Zones Project. Beginning Tuesday, the city will enter a "discovery phase" through May, where it will gather as much information on the current situation, meet with stakeholders and take in residents' input. The cost for the city is nearly $6 million, which has been raised by the health care partners.

Palm Springs ready to dive in with Geoff Kors at the helm

Geoff Kors, a longtime Palm Springs resident and former elected official, will serve as executive director of the Blue Zones Project in Palm Springs. Kors was first elected as a city councilmember for District 3 in 2015 and reelected in 2019. He rotated into the mayor role in 2020 and lead during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In January 2022, Kors announced he would not seek a third term when his seat was up for re-election the coming November. Beginning in July 2023, he and his husband lived in the United Kingdom for a year, where they traveled, visited family and focused on their health and wellness.

After the Palm Springs City Council decided to participate in Blue Zones, Kors said Blue Zones officials reached out to him to see if he was interested in joining the effort. The timing worked out well, and "it's a great fit," he said, considering all he did in the United Kingdom.

In his new role with the Blue Zones Project, Kors will be responsible for leading the rollout and implementation of the initiative.

"I decided to apply because this was an opportunity to focus on improving health and wellness in our community," he said. "This has been a passion of mine, and I am excited to be able to work with our community over the next three years as part of the Blue Zones Project."

Kors has been interested in blue zones research for a number of years, essentially spearheading the city's project effort back in 2021. Seeing the success of other communities, Kors wondered if similar results could be seen in Palm Springs. He also said, at the time, that it aligned with what he believed was the most important role of government, which is prioritizing the health, well-being and happiness of residents.

The company states that participating communities have seen significant drops in obesity and smoking rates, economic investment in downtown areas, grant funding awards to support health equity policies and programs and health care cost savings. The Beach Cities Health District, consisting of Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach, reported that since partnering with the Blue Zones Project in 2010, there has been a 19% increase in exercise, 29% decrease in overweight residents, 42% drop in smoking and 9% drop in daily stress.

"If we can pass on to children now how to be healthier, how to be more active in their day-to-day lives, that's the gift of a lifetime," Kors said.

Palm Springs faces a number of challenges when it comes to well-being, according to a readiness assessment conducted by Blue Zones experts and local leaders. Those include inconsistent roadway standards, high cost of housing and limited affordability, varying levels of walkability and pedestrian safety, fluctuating seasonal population and extreme climate. Additionally, according to a Gallup Well-Being Index, one in two Palm Springs residents don't exercise at "appropriate levels," two in three are experiencing regular financial stress and four in five are overweight or obese.

"We have a food desert, particularly in the north end of Palm Springs," Kors said. "I think the city's been really increasing bicycle lanes, but currently there are no protected bicycle lanes." He also noted that shade is an issue throughout the city, which routinely prevents people from staying active outdoors year-round, along with the triple-digit heat.

Blue Zones identified a few ways the city could better serve residents, such as by reconfiguring central one-way streets, expanding active transportation coverage, continuing to expand housing supply, enhancing climatic adaptations and increasing accessibility to green spaces. According to the readiness assessment, Blue Zones estimates that a coordinated, comprehensive effort to address well-being gaps could save the city $207.2 million over the next decade (which factors in medical cost savings, productivity savings and regional economic improvement of performance).

Through the discovery phase, Kors said the goal is to "really look at what the current situation is, where we think we can add the most value as Blue Zones and making sure we're aligning with the priorities that exist but maybe we don't have the bandwidth to take on as a city." When specific action items are identified, they will be presented to the Palm Springs City Council for approval and public comment. Kors said Blue Zones staff will also look for grant opportunities to fund those projects.

Some projects that other cities have spearheaded include cooking demonstrations, safe walking/biking routes to schools and various walking and hiking groups, the executive director pointed out. In July, Palm Springs City Councilmember Grace Garner and Mayor Jeffrey Bernstein noted that they would like Blue Zones to go beyond addressing issues that the city is already working on, such as affordable housing and shade structures.

Local residents will have an opportunity to voice their opinions about what they'd like to see addressed at a community meeting, which Kors said is scheduled for Jan. 15, as well as through online surveys. Additional details about the meeting will be shared at a later time. Kors added Blue Zones will meet with city staff, school districts, tribal leaders and other stakeholders to hear their priorities and find ways to best align the work.

"The ultimate goal is to see a much healthier and happier community. I think Palm Springs is an amazing place to live, but a lot of folks aren't healthy, a lot of folks aren't as connected in the community," Kors said. "There are a lot of people who are isolated. We have a lot of people who are working and have kids who don't have time to connect, and there are people with a lot less resources who don't have access to affordable, healthy food."

"All those things impact how people feel, the illnesses they get, and if we can see ourselves increase the positives while decreasing the negative health impacts, that is the goal," he added.

Blue Zones is hiring three full-time local staff members to serve as community engagement, public policy and organization and well-being leads in Palm Springs. Those positions can be found at www.bluezones.com/careers.

Coachella to begin Blue Zone project soon

The city of Coachella will also launch its Blue Zones Project in January. Hernandez said the city allocated around $250,000 over three years to participate.

In a previous interview with The Desert Sun, Dr. Shunling Tsang, deputy public health officer at Riverside University Health, said Coachella was identified as a "good candidate" to become a blue zone because of the work it has already been doing to provide access to "healthy choices" for its residents.

That includes the city's "heavy" investment in its downtown, including facilitating physical activity by incorporating walk and bike paths. Additionally, in October 2022, the city placed 288 trees and plants between Leoco Lane and Ninth Street for its $5.3 million Urban Greening and Connectivity Project, as a way to help moderate temperatures and solar radiation for pedestrians and bicyclists along the Grapefruit Boulevard corridor. The route also makes it easy to reach key parts of the city, including a transportation center, parks, the post office, library, senior center and restaurants.

Earlier this year, Central Coachella also welcomed a new transit hub for SunLine bus riders traveling into or out of the area. The center includes larger shade structures, seats, a water bottle filling station, security cameras and other amenities aimed at increasing comfort and safety for SunLine riders.

Challenges that the city faces, according to a Blue Zones report, are high rates of food insecurity, financial stress, lack of affordable housing and limited access to healthy food and health care. Gallup also states that half of residents are struggling with their health, two in five are not proud of their community and more than half are experiencing regular financial stress.

Ways that Coachella can see transformation include building more cycling infrastructure, housing, a wellness hub, capitalizing on city investments and climate adaptations. Creating a healthy food environment is another key opportunity for well-being for the city.

"What we're asking for is a fundamental human cultural shift and how we view life. Life is supposed to be fun, life is supposed to be about gathering with one another and having good, emotional times together. That happens around food and wine," Coachella Mayor Hernandez said. "That's the thing about the Blue Zones. How do we get more of that? By understanding that if we do the right thing, and we're conscious about our diets and about our health, that we can enjoy more time together often."

For Hernandez, the most valuable aspect of having Coachella participate in Blue Zones is giving residents "the mental frameworks to look at nutrition, relationships, their mental health and quality of life in a way that wasn't as clear."

"There's a lot of healthy and beautiful qualities about Latinos: We gather, we converse, we dance, we love, we cry, we laugh. But now we can give them a little bit more education and say, 'Did you know if you eat from this hour to this hour and you fast, or did you know that if you just change this little thing and instead of using this trans fat or lard and use a little bit of grapeseed oil to cook or fry food ... it's a little bit more nutritious,'" he said.

Blue Zones is also hiring full-time community engagement, public policy and organization and well-being leads for Coachella's project.

Is Blue Zones too good to be true?

Some have raised questions around Blue Zones and its data.

An October New York Times article noted a preprint study (which has not been certified by peer review) that claimed that some areas with high numbers of people living past 100 have faulty record keeping. Many of the areas that were looked at for the study had low literacy rates and poor record keeping, which resulted in an absence of birth certificates, some older people not knowing how old they are and families not registering people's deaths.

Dan Buettner, the founder of Blue Zones, told the New York Times that these fraudulent instances were not occurring in the five regions declared as blue zones. He added that he and his team use rigorous methods to verify birth records, including using various sources of information for confirmation and interviewing nonagenarians, centenarians and their families.

Previous reporting by Desert Sun journalist Paul Albani-Burgio was used in this article.

Ema Sasic covers entertainment and health in the Coachella Valley. Reach her at ema.sasic@desertsun.com or on Twitter @ema_sasic.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Palm Springs, Coachella join Blue Zones to improve well-being for locals