What is Wellness Policy? Why Is It So Important?
By Tonia Callender, GWI research fellow
We are grappling with increasingly severe global crises that threaten our health and wellbeing. The Global Wellness Institute continues to champion the adoption of wellness practices, preventive approaches and healthy lifestyles to counter these threats. In its earlier report, “Defining Wellness Policy,” GWI introduced wellness policy and sparked a global conversation about how we can use it to improve our wellbeing. But what is wellness policy and why is it important? In this edition of the Brief, we define it and outline how it can benefit our communities.
The world’s populations are grappling with escalating crises that threaten our health and wellbeing. Governments, the private sector and individuals understand that widespread adoption of preventive approaches and healthy lifestyles is essential if we are to address our mounting global health crises and spiraling economic costs. Unfortunately, not everyone who desires a healthy lifestyle and knows how to live it has the resources, motivation, knowledge, or enabling environment to do so.
Since its inception, the Global Wellness Institute has embraced the vision of “empowering wellness worldwide,” championing the adoption of practices and the creation of environments that bring wellness to all populations. In 2022, to further its goal of “wellness for all,” GWI released its groundbreaking report, “Defining Wellness Policy.” The report launched GWI’s Wellness Policy Series and was the first-ever study to define wellness policy and argue for why it is needed. “Defining Wellness Policy” generated a cross-cutting, global conversation about how we can use wellness policies to strengthen communities, enhance workplaces and improve global wellbeing. But what is wellness policy?
Wellness is an active process that includes activities, choices and lifestyles leading to a state of holistic health. It involves being aware and working toward optimal health and wellbeing. Thus, it is an individual pursuit based on self-responsibility. However, our wellness is also significantly influenced by the physical, social and cultural environments in which we live that shape and guide our behaviors, lifestyles and experiences. A variety of stakeholders, from governments to the private sector and community organizations can use targeted policies to change our behaviors and these environments. Wellness policy is a set of cross-cutting actions that encourage healthy lifestyles and create supportive environments for human health and wellbeing. It offers a framework and policy options that can be adopted across existing government agencies and economic sectors, at every level of government, and in partnership with the private and nonprofit sectors. Stakeholders should consider using wellness policy because it is:
- Unifying. Wellness policy is an opportunity to unify converging global values and implement a new vision centered on human and environmental health and wellbeing.
- Multifaceted. Wellness policy provides a range of solutions that can be led by multiple actors, at different levels of government, across various professions and in a wide range of communities.
- Complementary. Rather than replacing existing programs, wellness policy complements health and public health policy by drawing attention to the many lifestyle factors and the environmental determinants of health that are beyond the mandate of both healthcare and public health, and that cut across many government silos.
- Comprehensive. Wellness policy and the wellness industry can support and cross-fertilize a wide range of government priorities, like health, economic growth, workforce development, and quality of life.
- Flexible. Wellness policies can target the needs of specific populations and lifespan groups, including underserved and vulnerable groups such as children, seniors and rural populations.
To learn more about wellness policy and our Wellness Policy Series, see GWI’s ground-breaking 2022 “Defining Wellness Policy.”
