Norm Johnson and Jason Harrington represent the Blue Zone Project and shared what that means for Spirit Lake with the Iowa Great Lakes Rotary on Wednesday, January 4. Norm Johnson, Executive Director of the YMCA, and Jason Harrington, CEO of Lakes Regional Healthcare, both are part of the Power 9 Advisory Board which is working on the Spirit Lake application to become a Blue Zone Community. Last July, Governor Branstad challenged Iowans to become the healthiest state in the nation. Wellmark backed the challenge by providing grant money for communities to vie for in this challenge. Spirit Lake launched its application with the Start Somewhere Walk held last October with over 2000 participants. Since then, the community had made it to the final 58 communities who were asked to submit applications by January 4. Ten communities will be selected to share in $50 million in grant money.

The Blue Zone Project is based on the book “The Blue Zone” by Dan Buettner, who studied communities all over the world to see where the healthiest people lived. He took the top 6 communities and then compared what factors made them the healthiest. Those factors have become known as the Power 9 Principles and cover aspects of 4 categories – Move Naturally, Right Outlook, Eat Wisely and Belong. For more information about Iowa’s Blue Zone project, go to http://www.iowahealthieststate.com/blue-zones.