Nutrition & Foodservice Edge Magazine - May/June 2023 - 35

MAKE FOOD THE
ROOT OF YOUR
brand wellness
BY DANA FILLMORE, RD
AS INFLATION, supply chain,
staffing, and lingering COVID
concerns challenge an industry
working to maintain the health of
people and contain costs, everyone
is scrambling. The solution for many
healthcare organizations and senior
living communities could be as simple
as focusing on wellness.
Wellness is central to every healthcare
and senior living operation.
Healthcare providers have long
recognized the value good nutrition
has on well-being. In senior living,
food combines with personal
interaction to provide physical and
social wellness.
Savvy organizations are already
exercising their wellness muscles as
a top strategy for health promotion
and cost management. Health systems
are increasingly adopting lifestyle
medicine, a wellness-centered
preventive care model. This trend is
expected to continue in the senior
living space. Almost two-thirds of
respondents in an International
Council on Active Aging survey said
their senior living community will be
based on a wellness lifestyle by 2025.1
WHAT IS WELLNESS?
Wellness includes many factors.
Humans need and desire many things
to be " well. " Consider these models:
* The National Wellness Institute
promotes six dimensions of wellness:
emotional, occupational, physical,
social, intellectual, and spiritual.2
* The Mather Institute takes a
person-centered approach, defining
wellness as " the process of engaging
in behaviors and decisions that
enable people to reach their full
potential. " 3
* The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) connects wellness
with well-being and sums it up in
its broadest sense as encompassing
physical, mental, and social domains
of life.4
That is why organizations using a
broad, multidisciplinary approach to
wellness are most likely to succeed
in enabling patients and residents to
flourish. In fact, a forum of thought
leaders from the senior living industry
called out that " wellness influences all
areas: hospitality, culinary, outreach/
marketing, engagement activities,
fitness, ADL assistance, memory care,
health care, partnerships. " 1
WHY WELLNESS
OFFERINGS WIN
Healthcare and senior living
organizations with comprehensive
wellness offerings are showing results
in two areas:
* Residents and patients are
experiencing an improved quality
and satisfaction in life.
* Organizations are seeing cost
savings and revenue-generating
opportunities, especially in valuebased
reimbursement models.
For senior living organizations,
benefits include stabilized occupancy,
partnership opportunities with health
systems, and private pay revenue from
programs such as enhanced dining.1
For healthcare systems, the benefits
come from influencing lifestyle
behavior changes that slow the
healthcare spending curve.5
Chronic
conditions, such as diabetes and heart
disease, are driving higher healthcare
costs. These conditions and others
are preventable and treatable with
wellness-focused lifestyle behavior
changes, the CDC says.6
FOOD AT THE ROOT OF
WELLNESS
Good eating habits are high on the
list when it comes to the study on
health risk factors, " poor diet drives
$50 billion a year in healthcare costs. " 7
Additionally, the 2022 White House
Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and
Health reports growth in nutritionrelated
diseases, especially during the
pandemic.8
This highlights an opportunity for
lifestyle behavior changes, such as
NUTRITION & F OOD SER VICE EDGE | MAY-JUNE 2023 35
Nutrition & Foodservice Edge Magazine - May/June 2023

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