By Dr. Trevor Hancock

If, as I have argued in my previous column, unsustainable development is bad for health, then is the converse true? There is a strong case that in order to be healthy, communities need to be ecologically sustainable. Many of the actions that could be taken to make communities and societies more sustainable have what we call health co-benefits.

These health co-benefits are not limited to minimising the harm from global ecological change. There are large health costs to our current way of life, and thus large potential health benefits resulting from a shift to a more sustainable society. Here I will explore several examples that we identified in the Canadian Public Health Association’s Discussion Document on the ecological determinants of health; energy, agriculture and food, and urban design and transportation.

In a 2012 Global Energy Assessment, the direct global health impacts of energy systems (especially but not exclusively those that are fossil fuel-based) were likened in scale to “tobacco, alcohol, and high blood pressure, and exceeded only by malnutrition”. In fact, the authors estimated that they “directly cause as many as five million premature deaths annually and more than 5% of all ill health when measured as lost healthy life years”.

These health impacts arise largely from air pollution due to the combustion of fossil fuels, but there are also occupational health impacts (especially from coal mining), water and soil pollution, population displacement from dams, large numbers of deaths and injuries resulting from the use of energy in transportation and, of course, the health impacts resulting from climate change.

On the other hand, numerous studies have found that renewables (mainly wind and solar) and conservation have much smaller health and environmental impacts. Clearly, there are significant health benefits to be gained from a move away from fossil fuel-based energy, especially coal, with conservation and renewable energy systems offering a much healthier future.

This is not pie in the sky: A recent report by a group of independent Canadian scholars states that “Because renewable energy resources are plentiful, we believe that Canada could reach 100% reliance on low carbon electricity by 2035. This makes it possible, in turn, to adopt a long-term target of at least 80% reduction in emissions by the middle of the century”. The health benefits would be significant.

When it comes to food and agriculture, our current intensive system is an environmentally harmful approach that provides a highly processed diet low in fiber and high in animal protein. If we are to dramatically increase global food production to meet growing populations and demands, and simultaneously reduce environmental harm, we need a very different agricultural system and a very different diet.

In fact, one of the key strategies proposed by Jonathan Foley in a 2011 paper in Scientific American is a shift to a low-meat diet. Many more people could be fed on less land, thus reducing intensity. There are important health benefits to such an approach. Land, soil, water and biodiversity would be conserved and greenhouse gas emissions would drop. A reduction in portion size would reduce the pressure on the environment, not to mention our waistlines, while a shift to a low-meat or vegetarian diet would have a number of direct health benefits, including reduced rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer.

Moreover, recent research in the UK has shown that a low-meat or vegetarian diet would markedly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For high meat-eaters (more than 100 grams per day) those emissions are more than 7 kg of carbon dioxide equivalents per day, while for low-meat–eaters (less than than 50 grams per day) it is less than 5 kg per day, and less than 4 kgs per day for fish-eaters and vegetarians.

Finally, not only is urban sprawl a very energy-inefficient urban form, often requiring use of a car for many of the daily activities of life, it is also unhealthy. Conversely, the health benefits of ‘Smart Growth’ (one of the key urban development solutions to urban sprawl, which encourages active transport and public transit), has been likened to a ‘medical miracle’. It reduces deaths and illness from pollution, physical inactivity and traffic crashes, while promoting mental health and social capital.

In short, a more environmentally sustainable way of life brings with it many health benefits, including mental and social health benefits that are often overlooked. What’s not to like about that?

© Trevor Hancock, 2015

Originally published in Times Colonist 5 August, 2015

By Dr. Trevor Hancock

Richard Horton is the Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals. In January 2013 he was invited by the Rockefeller Foundation to participate in a conference in Beijing on ‘Innovation for the next 100 years’ as part of the Centennial celebrations of the Foundation.

At that event he proposed the concept of ‘planetary health’ as a challenging issue for the 21^st century, suggesting that “the planet’s potential to sustain our species is slowly declining” and that we need to adopt “a planetary view of human health”. In particular he noted that this was not just about the state of the Earth’s ecosystems but about “the quality of human socio-political and economic institutions that shape human responses to the dangers”.

In 2014, he and several others published a brief Manifesto for Planetary Health in The Lancet. They called for public health and the wider society to address the threats we face to human health and wellbeing, to the sustainability of our civilization, and to the natural and human-made systems that support us.

At the same time, the Rockefeller Foundation funded and supported the creation of the Lancet Commission on Planetary Health. The Commission’s report – for which I was an expert reviewer – was released this week. It makes for somber reading.

The Commission examines not only climate change but also ocean acidification, land degradation, water scarcity, overexploitation of fisheries and biodiversity loss, all of which “pose serious challenges to the global health gains of the past several decades and are likely to become increasingly dominant during the second half of this century and beyond”.

The members of the Commission – leading scientists and practitioners from the health, environmental and social sciences – report they are “deeply concerned that . . . we have been mortgaging the health of future generations to realize economic and development gains in the present”. In other words, we are pursuing short-term gain at the expense of long-term pain, leaving it to our children and grandchildren to cope with the mess we are creating.

The drivers of these alarming trends, they note, are “highly inequitable, inefficient, and unsustainable patterns of resource consumption and technological development, together with population growth.” And they suggest that “the way we organize society’s actions in the face of threats is more important than the threats themselves”.

The Commission identifies three major challenges we need to address. The first, are conceptual and empathy failures, including our use of GDP as a measure of human progress, the failure to factor in the harm we do in the future due to our decisions today, and the unfair impact of the harm we do to disadvantaged communities, especially in the global South.

The second set of challenges, which they call knowledge failures, includes our failure to fully recognize the health impacts of broad environmental and social conditions. We also fail to work holistically and across disciplines, and we are poor at coping with uncertainty in our decision-making.

Thirdly, there are implementation failures, or governance challenges. We delay response, especially in the face of uncertainty, and we fail to account for the lag-time inherent in both ecological and social change. We also, I would add, fail to allow for the potential for sudden, rapid and dramatic change that is inherent in the complex adaptive systems that are our ecosystems and social systems.

The Commission’s report is a serious warning to which people and governments should pay heed. There are some, undoubtedly, who will try to wish away this report, as they have so many other reports, so many times before. But we can only bury our heads in the sand and ignore our responsibility towards future generations for so long. There is growing evidence of accelerating global ecological change, and this will have profound impacts on the health and wellbeing of many alive today.

The sign of true leadership is to recognize the global ecological, social and human crisis we face and take action now, not punt it down the road 50 or a 100 years, as the G-7 leaders recently did on the fossil-free energy file. The challenges are mounting, and the time we have left to take decisive action is narrowing. The time for action is now.

© Trevor Hancock, 2015

Published in Times Colonist 20 July, 2015

On Tuesday June 2^nd, 2015, I had a chance to watch the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s summary report and recommendations with my 10 year old son who was taught at school that residential schools was something that had happened ‘in the past’. Despite this educational error, I was glad he was able to learn what was never available to me when I first arrived in Canada as an immigrant child. However, as a parent I realize there is still so much work to be done to educate this new generation about the legacy of colonialism. So, I started another conversation with him, one that will continue….

I hope that schools, workplaces and communities all across this country are having these important conversations so that we do not forget history and to take action as citizens. Part of this taking action is demanding accountability at all levels of government for the impacts of colonial policies that affect Aboriginal Peoples on a daily basis. Without having a national dialogue about this, it will be hard for our children to understand why residential schools have an impact today, and how we all have a role to play. Reconciliation is a process and it has only begun in Canada. Evidence of this is very apparent if we look at the proportion of Aboriginal children in care, or Aboriginal people in jail. Social innovation efforts will require us to not only question our assumptions and beliefs about Aboriginal people, but also to disrupt existing power structures and unjust resource systems. When Aboriginal people are supported in their own communities, in their own lands, we may have a chance of achieving equity, health and wellbeing for the future generations.

Today, on National Aboriginal Day, I was celebrating with friends and family at Trout Lake, unceded lands of the Coast Salish Peoples. I was happy to see so many Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal families, of all ages, celebrating together.

Yet, I was also deeply saddened as I reflected how in my home country of Chile, people are shamed if they admit having Indigenous heritage. My own Indigenous ancestry was hidden to me, to all my family for many generations because of this shame. It was only when my mother had a rare genetic disease during her pregnancy with my brother did she discover that her grandmother Esther was Mapuche. The Mapuche people as other First Nations communities have the worst education, socio-economic, and health status statistics compared to the larger population. Yet, they are also resilient and have managed to restore their teachings and language. Today, many Mapuche communities are engaged in the Mapuche conflict over land and Indigenous rights in both Chile and Argentina.

Today, I was also sad to realize that colonization has also separated the north and south Indigenous Peoples, which share so much in terms of values, teachings, roots in language, culture, struggles and strengths. Yet, today’s songs and dance made me hopeful that one day the Mapuche people will be able look to Aboriginal Peoples in Canada, in quite the same way as we now look at how strong and proud the Maori People stand today. Perhaps the day will come when Indigenous Peoples across the north and south of this continent will celebrate new laws, new policies and true reconciliation that brings all of us together, as one Peoples.

By Paola Ardiles

By Trevor Hancock

Many years ago, the American Health Foundation had one of my all-time favourite slogans: ”The secret of life is to die young . . . but as late as possible!” I am privileged to dance with a group who live that approach.

The Hollytree Morris dancers were part of the great folk revival of the 1970s, being formed in 1973. Morris dancing is a centuries-old English traditional folk dance, with sides all over England and around the world.

One way to understand it is as a form of non-violent rugby: A group of people who get together to do something energetic in a team, then go to the pub to drink beer and sing songs.

Some members of Hollytree have been doing this together since 1973, and many are in their 70’s and a few in their 80s. In fact, at 66, I am one of the youngest members of the side! What distinguishes them is their physical and spiritual energy, their ability to play and have fun and be young.

This coming weekend, we are celebrating the oldest of our number, Fred. He turns 90 this week, and still practices every week and comes out to dance in public when we do that. In fact, we think Fred is probably the oldest active Morris dancer in the world! So Morris sides from all over the Pacific Northwest will be in town to help us celebrate.

But I am not writing this simply to extol Fred or the other members of our side, nor to advertise our dance-out. Rather, I want to make a larger point about the health benefits of participation in the arts in general, and dance in particular.

When I give presentations to recreation and parks organizations and public health audiences about the health benefits of recreation, I always use a picture of us dancing. And I say: ‘Look what is happening here’. First, we are dancing, being physically active and using our strength, agility, flexibility and balance – all the things the exercise advisors tell us we should do.

Second, we are being creative, engaged in the arts and learning together. One of the beauties of Morris and other dance forms is that there are always new dances to learn, or old dances to modify. Dancing keeps our minds active and flexible and agile too!

Third, we are outdoors, often dancing in and connecting with nature. And we are also dancing in public; a little public appreciation and applause helps you feel good!

Finally, dancing together like this is a social experience. We are working together, forming life-long friendships and social support networks. Going to the pub is not really about drinking beer, but about socialising.

Put all this together and you have a recipe for fun and a healthy old age. But while the benefits may seem obvious to those of us engaged in dance, there has been surprisingly little research on the topic. As recently as 2009, a group of New Zealand-based researchers could state that “no reviews on the physical benefits of dancing for healthy older adults have been published in the scientific literature”.

In their review they found a few studies that had some reasonable evidence that through dancing older adults could increase their aerobic power, muscle endurance, strength and flexibility in their lower body, as well as their balance, agility, and gait. Of course, this was not news to the Hollytree dancers!

A more recent review from the UK of recreational dance in young people found, not surprisingly, that it improved fitness and bone health and could help reduce obesity, and found some evidence it could improve body image and reduce anxiety.

A 2006 brochure from Arts Council England noted many benefits of dance, which it noted was second in popularity only to football in English schools. The Ministers of Public Health and of Culture wrote: “Dance can have a powerful effect on people’s lives and we want to see the physical, emotional, mental and social benefits of dance extended to as many people as possible”.

By the way, we really do hope to see you at 3.30 on Saturday June 13^th in front of the Legislature. Come and see us demonstrate the health benefits of dance and while you are at it, wish Fred well. Better yet, come and dance with us – we think it is part of the secret to a healthy old age!

© Trevor Hancock, 2015

Originally published in Times Colonist June 8, 2015.

By Sydney Nilan

Runa Foundation is beginning a groundbreaking new initiative in the Peruvian Amazon. As an organization looking to create new value for tropical forests and their inhabitants, we are always looking for ways to share the bounty of the Amazon with the world.

Teaming with Peruvian NGO Rios Nete, our newest project focuses on health and well-being. We are asking the question: What if tomorrow’s innovations in modern medicine have their roots in the Amazon’s ancient past?

The indigenous peoples of the Amazon inhabit the world’s single largest incubator of biological diversity, and over centuries they have discovered the properties and medicinal uses of the vast array of plants that surrounds them.

However, over the last hundred years this knowledge has been under attack, as modern healthcare has pushed traditional medicine underground and out of sight. Today, there are very few people left who hold the knowledge of these plant medicines, and we are in a race against time to preserve their millennia old tradition.

Right now, we are launching an initiative to build the first ever Amazonian research facility bringing together western medical research methods and traditional Amazonian medicine. We are hoping to unlock the healing power of the Amazon, and show the world that people everywhere can benefit from the Amazon without destroying it.

Many modern pharmaceuticals are derived from forests and natural plant sources, and yet less than 5% of Amazonian plants have been scientifically evaluated for their medicinal properties. What makes this even more astounding is that the rainforest abounds with seemingly miraculous stories about cures for illnesses for which modern medicine has no answer.

In collaboration with indigenous healers, Runa Foundation and Rios Nete will research the efficacy of these plant-based remedies in addressing today’s chronic illnesses. We see Amazonian plant medicine as a ‘disruptive technology’ that could benefit communities across the world, starting with the people who live there.

Patients across the globe are looking for more effective, natural, and economical treatments for modern illnesses that are non-invasive and non-toxic. The Amazon not only holds the potential to provide people with a more integrated and holistic approach to health, but also showing the world the potential of Amazonian Medicine can provide the impetus to halt its destruction and save the lungs of the planet.

At Runa Foundation, we have seen the benefits of bringing together indigenous knowledge and modern enterprise models, and now we want to expand this idea into health and wellness. If you’d like to help, please visit us at www.plantmed.org

For more information:

Aliana H Piñeiro, Director of Evaluation and Development, Runa Foundation

By Paola Ardiles

Last week I was excited to be invited as a guest speaker at SFU’s Radius social entrepreneurs and innovators fellow program to talk about my experience around building relationships and networks. The 2015 cohort is full of bright, enthusiastic and determined Millennials. I was curious about how my views as a GenX on building relationships would differ from theirs, especially given that they have spent much of their lives somehow connected to technology.

As I started to reflect on how this work comes about in my daily life, I realized that relationships and partnerships are the most critical aspects of my work. In fact, I would argue that relationships are at the core of social innovation.

Have you ever found yourself trying to solve a complex social issue but been stuck on an idea until you actually engage in conversation with a friend or colleague? I often find that just by sharing my place of being stuck, the juices start to flow and by the end of the conversation I have had a breakthrough idea or created an action plan to move forward.

Through relationships you can build solid support for your ideas, no matter how big or small. The fellows asked me specifically about the ‘how’. How can we build relationships in a world where there is so much information out there and so many places to connect not just in person but also online?

(Michael Stone Photograph, with permission)

Relationships are cultivated over time and they definitely do not follow any certain path. My children and the new generation have taught me that building relationships can be very effective through social media and can also be based on reciprocity. I have also come to appreciate that building and sustaining relationships is the most important skill I can bring into my life. It is also like the concept of karma, relationships like opportunities don’t just happen to me, I can create them. I am not just referring to professional relationships. Personal ones can offer you the emotional support and space to be able to create in your work. Interestingly enough, many personal relationships of mine have turned to professional ones and vice versa.

For instance, I have been a close friend of Amy Robinson, Founder and Co-Executive Director of LOCO BC. We both share many common interests and values. Amy and I have cultivated a friendship for the last 5 years, practically since I moved to Vancouver, although it seems like we have been friends for a lifetime.  Conversations with her have hugely impacted my thinking.

LOCO BC is a non-profit local business alliance working to strengthen communities, grow the local economy and build strong, sustainable businesses by encouraging a shift in local purchasing by consumers, businesses and institutions/government. Our work is predicated on the belief that economic sustainability, along with social and environmental sustainability forms the bedrock of healthy and resilient communities.

Amy has worked tirelessly over the last decade to create this network and thanks to her commitment and her partnerships, LOCO is thriving. I have been watching her development as a woman and as professional and she is truly an inspiration. So, two years ago when I first started Bridge for Health I decided to join LOCO BC.

The more I was immersed in the world of economics and environmental sustainability, the more I could start to see the opportunities between my work in public health and business. I started to imagine how it could be possible to bring these worlds together as I realized that our visions are very similar.

Today, I am building Bridge for Health as a social enterprise focused on social innovations in health and creating a framework for Healthy Businesses. I am so grateful to have had Amy’s support throughout these years, especially to help through those times of self-doubt and uncertainty.

Of course, I have been influenced my many other friends and colleagues who have exposed me to a wide range of ideas about sustainability, design-thinking, inequities or spirituality. All of those conversations have in fact shaped my views and I am deeply grateful to all who have contributed to my vision, in one way or another.

Relationships can blossom into lifelong friendships or partnerships to help you create the world you want to live into. Never under estimate the power of human connection. It is powerful beyond measure.

And, we must not forget that years of research have confirmed that (healthy) relationships are also very good for our health and wellbeing!

So, next time you are going to tweet, send an email, meet someone for lunch meeting or invite someone for a coffee, remember that relationships don’t just happen to you, they are you. Every word, gesture and smile can have a positive impact to make this a healthier, kinder, safer and more just world.

Paola Ardiles, Founder Bridge for Health

By Paola Ardiles

Today is not just the first day of spring (or fall in the south), it is also the International Day of Happiness – a day to celebrate the things that contribute to human wellbeing and a flourishing society. Dr. Mark Williamson, Director of Action for Happiness

Bridge for Health is celebrating this day by putting forward a Healthy Business Practice Framework to start a conversation on how we can promote happiness and wellbeing in our workplaces.

We spend so much of our adult lives at work, so how can we ensure we are creating happy and healthy environments for individuals, teams, organizations to flourish and reach their full potential? To date there are many interventions around employee health to support individuals to get more active, or choose healthier food choices. Those are all important. However, if we view health as holistic and collective, there are many other areas that are just as important to pay attention to. Especially if we think about the organization or business, and its community as a whole, or as a system.

This model belows highlights six business practice areas and evidence-based examples of practices to promote wellbeing in a business setting, that are aligned with corporate social and environmental responsible practices. It is a starting point and we hope you will join in to provide examples and feedback.

How does your business or organization measure up in these 6 different practice areas?

We are currently collecting stories to post as promising practices and would love to hear from you!

Contact us today at info@bridgeforhealth.org

Reference: Ardiles, p (2015). Healthy Business Practice Framework. Adapted from Healthy Campus Initiative, Health Promotion Team, Simon Fraser University. 

Along with over 100 organizations, Bridge for Health is a member of the Better Transit & Transportation Coalition and supports a YES vote in the transit referendum in Metro Vancouver. On March 16th let’s show with our vote that we care about the health, environment, economy and wellbeing of our future generations. Below, Dr. Trevor Hancock shares why investing in public transit is good for public health!

By Dr. Trevor Hancock

Public transit plays a vital role in our highly urbanised societies, one that is particularly important for people who don’t have a car. That includes people with low-paying jobs as well as many children, youth, university and college students and seniors, among others. It helps them get to and from work and to access amenities and services.

Good public transit also reduces congestion, leading to more economically efficient cities, because there is less time and energy wasted in traffic jams; in the USA, traffic delays due to congestion consumed 3.7 billion hours in 2003, and time is money! But beyond these obvious benefits, there are also many public health benefits that result from good public transit. But first we need to understand the health impacts of transportation in general, especially in cities.

Happily, one of the world’s leading experts on this issue is here in Victoria. Todd Litman, Director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, did a review of transportation and health for the prestigious Annual Reviews of Public Health in 2013. He noted that the main health problems associated with transportation include deaths and injuries from traffic crashes, heart and lung diseases due to air pollution, reduced physical activity and increasing obesity, mental health impacts and lack of access to health-related goods and services.

A 2014 World Bank report found that about 1.3 million people die every year as a result of road traffic crashes and a further 78.2 million people suffer non-fatal injuries. Between age 1 and 59, road injuries are among the top ten causes of death. Not surprisingly, as the world urbanises and industrialises, the toll rises; deaths due to motor vehicles have increased almost 50% in the past 20 years.

The World Bank also estimates that 184,000 deaths annually are caused by air pollution due to vehicles; other estimates suggest it is much higher, closer to the number of deaths due to injuries. Overall, road traffic causes more deaths than such traditional causes of concern as HIV, TB or malaria; road transport is in that sense a plague.

A third major concern is reduced physical activity and increased obesity. Physical inactivity is linked to our-car-dominated society and the urban sprawl that it encourages. Increased car use is associated with reduced physical activity and increased obesity, which results in more ill health and early deaths.

The mental and social health impacts arise in part from the sheer amount of time we spend in vehicles. In Canada, we spend about an hour a day in vehicles on average. A daily commute of one hour each way amounts to about 40 hours a month, or a full working week each month; this amounts to 40 hours a month that is not spent with family, friends and neighbours.

Morover, research has shown that stress levels – including salivary cortisol, a measurable marker of stress – increase as commuting time increases, but less so in those commuting by train rather than in cars. Importantly, one study showed that improved transit that led to reduced commute time also led to reduced stress.

Finally, all that gasoline used in driving is an important source of carbon dioxide, contributing to global warming and climate disruption, with all the negative health conequences that ensue.

So how can public transit improve this situation? First, it is a lot safer. The number of people killed per passenger mile is an order of magnitude (tenfold) smaller. Second, it’s a lot cleaner; less air pollution means fewer deaths and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Third, transit users walk and bike more, so are more physically active and fitter. Fourth, as noted above, transit use is less stressful, even if it does not necessarily reduce the length of time spent commuting.

Finally, transit plays an important social role we don’t often consider. It was former Toronto Mayor John Sewell who highlighted this for me in the 1980s, when he described Toronto’s public transit system as “the great democratizer”. By this he meant that everybody – young and old, rich and poor, black and white, male and female – literally rubbed shoulders with each other on a daily basis, and had to learn to get on with each other. It’s a very interesting way to think about public transit.

So if I were in Metro Vancouver, I would definitely be voting Yes in the transit referendum this month – it’s just good public health policy.

© Trevor Hancock, 2015

Originally posted on Times Colonist March 11, 2015

By Paola Ardiles

You don’t need to be an economist to understand how our current economic system is failing us.

Everyday we hear new stories locally and globally about rising unemployment rates, the widening gap between the rich and the poor, child poverty, terrorism and climate change.

In 2009, UK researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett published what has been called a ‘sweeping theory of everything’ in their ground-breaking book The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone. Their work shows that levels of inequality significantly impact each of the following eleven different health and social problems: physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage pregnancies and children well-being. They argue that this inequality has eroded trust, increased anxiety and illness, and encouraged excessive consumption. Unfortunately, this is a global concern and outcomes are significantly worse in greater unequal societies.

Why do we live in world where 1 billion people wake up hungry? What have we proposed as solutions for this massive inequity? It seems to me that our well-intended solutions to date have allowed these levels of inequity to increase. But why?

Our society has grown to be very good at developing interventions, projects and programs to solve some of these pervasive social and health issues arising from our modern economical structures. In fact, the Honorable Monique Bégin, one of the champions of the Canada Health Act (known globally for the early foundations of a just and equitable health care system) has recognized that we live in a country of perpetual pilot projects that rarely move towards system change.

The current system has also isolated our advocacy efforts to address these social and health-related issues. For instance, recent activity in relation to violence prevention is a good example of how various efforts and resources are channelled to create awareness campaigns or community projects, without consideration of the collective impact of these often isolated initiatives. How can we eradicate violence if we are not addressing the complex, yet modifiable social, political, economic and environmental factors that are at its core?

We can’t rely on siloed approaches or interventions that target individual problems. How can we transform the way in which we view the root causes of these systemic issues?

If we look upstream for the ultimate cause of the economic crisis that is tearing so many lives apart, we find an illusion: the belief that money-a mere number created with a simple accounting entry that has no reality outside the human mind- is wealth. Because money represents a claim on so many things essential to our survival and well-being, we easily slip into evaluating economic performance in terms of the rate of financial return to money, essentially the rate at which money is growing, rather than by the economy’s contribution to the long-term well-being of people and nature (David C. Korten, 2009).

Fortunately, a global movement has emerged to change the measuring stick and the bar on how we measure progress that challenge the current economic system and GDP standards. New ways are emerging everyday. In essence, we are already creating a collective systemic shift towards wellbeing. In addition to the new measurement systems prioritizing quality of life, environmental sustainability, and corporate social responsibility, some governments are understanding that they need to invest in wellbeing. In fact, the British government recently announced a What Works Centre for Wellbeing, with initial funding of £3.5 million over three years to investigate the determinants of wellbeing and how to improve it. The business community is also very interested in how wellbeing of employees can improve the bottom line and there is a growing body of psychological and economic evidence around individual wellbeing.

However, in order for the shift towards wellbeing to reach the tipping point, we cannot continue to work in isolation from one another. We cannot address issues of inequity if we continue to work from old paradigms that reward competition and self –interests in pursuit of economic prosperity, as proposed by the 18^th century priviledged western men who laid the foundations of the free market economic theory. Why not question these outdated theories that are not serving us today?

What if we shifted to a new paradigm that creates space for all of us to belong, and for sectors to come together? What if we prioritized caring, collaboration, empathy and compassion for one another, and importantly for ourselves.

Transformation starts with each and everyone of us, right now. However, a shift towards well-being and equity also means we need to create a space for women to lead us into the future before us. On this International Women’s day, I celebrate all women. I am grateful to those who came before us, who fearlessly fought for our right to vote and opened doors to higher education and the workforce, so that I can be writing these lines today. I am grateful for all those advocating for equal pay today and for the girls who are becoming the women of the future, with new ways of being, and new ways of creating wellbeing for all.

I can see a future where we all have opportunities to flourish, in a planet that is flourishing. Do you?

Paola Ardiles, Founder, Bridge for Health