Fairfield invited to apply for Blue Zone status

Fairfield?s preliminary application to become an Iowa Blue Zone community has been viewed favorably.

Fairfield has been asked to submit a full application for the program by Jan. 4.

The city is currently ranked third at bluezonesproject.com on the scoreboard for community support, which is one factor in the selection of Iowa?s 10 Blue Zone cities. Oelwein is in the lead, followed by Woodbine.

The Blue Zones Project is a collaboration of Wellmark and Healthways to ignite a community-by-community movement to improve the wellbeing of Iowa communities through permanent environment and policy changes to improve the emotional, physical and social health of residents, which should result in lower health care cost trends, higher productivity and increased economic viability.

The Blue Zones Project is a main component of the Healthiest State Initiative, which is an initiative to make Iowa the healthiest state in the nation by 2016 as measured by the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index.