Blue Protect of California is encouraging its members to reside like individuals in “Blue Zones” by providing entry to the Blue Zones Problem app, the insurer introduced final week. Blue Zones are areas of the world the place individuals reside longer, more healthy lives.

The time period was first coined by Dan Buettner, a Nationwide Geographic explorer and journalist. Buettner and his staff traveled the world to review communities the place individuals lived longer and had the next high quality of life. They recognized 5 Blue Zones: Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Ikaria, Greece; and Loma Linda, California. The corporate Blue Zones, which Buettner based, now works to assist cities, communities, organizations and employers reside more healthy lives.

The Blue Zones Problem App was co-developed by Blue Zones and Blue Protect of California. Blue Protect of California members can entry the app via the insurer’s digital way of life drugs platform, Wellvolution, which incorporates options for psychological well being, diabetes, hypertension and different situations.

The app permits members to evaluate their longevity, happiness, diet, and objective. They will then log their Blue Zone actions, equivalent to strolling or consuming a cup of beans. The actions all have some extent worth, and members intention to succeed in 400 factors every week. The app is free for Blue Protect of California members.

“The Blue Zones Problem App is basically about serving to individuals take stock of their very own little life radius and make these little changes, these greatest follow changes, so that they set themselves up for fulfillment,” Dan Buettner Jr., son of Dan Buettner and a Blue Zones govt vp & chief growth officer, mentioned in an interview.

The app additionally has an actual vitality and happiness check that enables members to trace their progress.

“Folks prefer to have a rating or a benchmark or one thing to trace their progress and their outcomes and really it's vital for us at Blue Protect to take a look at the members which might be utilizing it and see in the event that they're making progress,” Angie Kalousek Ebrahimi, senior director of Way of life Drugs at Blue Protect of California, mentioned in an interview.

Blue Protect of California has made this app obtainable to members after a pilot program with 1,000 individuals. In keeping with the announcement, the pilot program discovered that 99% of individuals skilled an enchancment of their well-being.

The insurer selected to supply the app to assist members obtain a wholesome way of life via strategies which have been confirmed efficient, Kalousek Ebrahimi mentioned.

“I feel Blue Zones is without doubt one of the most tangible, accessible fashions that folks on the whole can use to information themselves,” she mentioned. “I feel there's a lot info on the market about well being. You undergo your Instagram feed and each 5 minutes there's a brand new complement or you need to be doing such a exercise. The reality is that Dan Buettner and [Dan Buettner Jr.] …have completed quite a lot of work to see what works to assist individuals reside longer, more healthy lives. [These actions] are quite simple. They don’t seem to be all bodily. They’re psychological. They’re social. They’re about connection.”

She added that well being plans have historically targeted on sick care, treating sufferers after they’re already sick. With the Blue Zones Problem App, she hopes to “redefine what it means to be a well being plan that’s really caring for individuals’s well being from the beginning.”

Blue Protect of California is the primary insurer to supply the Blue Zones Problem App. When requested if Blue Zones plans to work with extra insurers sooner or later, Buettner Jr. mentioned the corporate is “on a mission to work with everybody, all over the place to deliver the teachings of the world’s longest-living individuals.”

Photograph: kate_sept2004, Getty Pictures