Airdrie has been talking for some time now about becoming Canada's healthiest city.  

Now, we're taking steps to make that dream a real possibility with the announcement that Airdrie will become the first Blue Zone project in Canada this September.

Abrio Health, formerly the Airdrie and Area Health Benefits Co-op, has announce that, based on populations and community health research, community input to the Blue Zones people when they visited Airdrie in May 2018, and Blue Zones pre-project analysis, the first Blue Zones project in Canada will move forward in the city with the goal to make Airdrie Canada's healthiest community.

It would be hard to find anyone who's more excited about that than Mayor Peter Brown who was ecstatic with the news.  "I don't know, I'm just really excited," Brown exclaims.  "We have a very young community and we could become the healthiest community in Canada which is an amazing title to have if you can think about the opportunities with business and post-secondary and employment, attracting people and driving the price of houses up and all those things.  It's just really exciting!"

The Blue Zones project is a community-led health and well-being improvement initiative which is designed to support communities in becoming healthier through changes to a city's environment, policy, social and health and healthcare networks.  There are more than 45 Blue Zone communities in the United States.

The three year Blue Zones initiative will be custom made for a Canadian city and will begin in Airdrie in September 2019,  An eight-month Discovery Period will end with baseline individual and overall population health measures.  Following that, an action plan specifically for Airdrie will be created.  Over the next two years, Abrio Health and its partners will implement an action plan and measure results annually.  Brown says we'll see a number of people from the Blue Zone going in and out of the city providing their expertise over the next three years.  

"Providing guidance, as far as a city goes, making a community more walkable so when we're looking at future developments or augmenting existing developments, they can give you little hints so you're encouraging people to walk a little further, encouraging people to connect with one another.  It's going to be an interesting process."

Abrio Health Board Chair Stan Grad says that they've literally spoken to hundreds or Airdronians about how to be healthier.  "We studied various data on the health of our community and the current state of our extraordinary existing local health and health care services," says Grad.  "We also reviewed various international models for all-in community engagement in health.  We've chosen to partner with Blue Zones because of their proven track record with larger scale community engagement, their unique measurement acumen and their proven results in improving health outcomes and healthy life expectancy with reduced health care costs."

Abrio Health and the City of Airdrie has partnered with the Calgary Foundation, Alberta Blue Cross and Alberta Health Services on the project. Funding for the project comes from donations, grants, in-kind support.  The City of Airdrie has committed $500,000 per year for three years to the project and has also contributed one full-time employee for three years.  

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