Missouri Highlands Health Care and the Blue Zones program are collaborating to change the trajectory of lives and health in Butler County, beginning Tuesday.
The free Blue Zones Ignite Poplar Bluff Community Keynote Event will be held at the Tinnin Fine Arts Center on the Three Rivers College campus.
A social hour with refreshments will be at 4-5 p.m. followed by the program from 5-6:30 p.m. Admittance is free, but registration is required at bluezones.com/ignite-poplar-bluff.
During the event, expert Dan Buettner will present research on the longest-lived and healthiest communities in the world, known as Blue Zones, and how cities can adopt the traits that make them successful.
Blue Zones recently gained popularity with the Netflix documentary “Live to 100: Secret of the Blue Zones,” said MoHi Director Karen White.
“The regions of the world that are identified as Blue Zones are not affluent parts of the world, with the exception of Loma Linda,” she explained. “These are very rural, poor parts of the world, and these people are living to be 100 years old and are doing so in very healthy ways... They don’t have the co-morbidities, they are very active until very late in life.”
Blue Zone communities in Iowa, Texas, Minnesota and beyond have already decreased smoking, obesity, and stress while increasing nutrition and lifespan, according to the Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index.
White stated most of MoHi’s patients live with chronic illness and co-morbid conditions. She also found census data revealing Southeast Missourians are dying 20 years younger than the national average. However, the region also shares advantages in geography and culture with other Blue Zones.
“We have mountains to be hiked and we’re very close with our families here. And community and family is such a strong part of Missouri Highlands, and is also a very strong part of Blue Zones,” she said.
White hopes cooperating with Blue Zones today will create a brighter future in an area of rising chronic health problems and a declining health care workforce.
“And I don’t know if Poplar Bluff and Butler County are ready for the change or not now, but we’re going to have to get ready to really make some impactful changes, or else we’re going to continue to see the declines in health and wellness and lives lost,” she said.
The keynote event is part of a week long assessment by Blue Zones, White added, and if Poplar Bluff is chosen for the program it will be the first Blue Zone in Missouri.
“Basically, I’m super excited,” she said.