The culture of healthy living in communities

What defines a group of individuals as part of a community is broadly interpreted and depends on the context of the group being categorized. For this review, community may be defined as "as a group of people with diverse characteristics who are linked by social ties, share common perspectives, and engage in joint action in geographical locations or settings". A given community will possess unique cultural attributes, defined by the American Psychological Association as "the values, beliefs, language, rituals, traditions, and other behaviors that are passed from one generation to another within any social group". Unhealthy lifestyle behaviors drive the unacceptably high incidence and prevalence of chronic disease in the United States. Despite well intentioned efforts, society appears to be failing at altering the trajectory of unhealthy lifestyle behaviors, from an individual to population level. Perhaps our oftentimes one size fits all approach to health behavior messaging and counseling is a critical shortcoming. The fact that being more physically active, not smoking and consuming a healthier diet is of great benefit to human physiology and therefore human health outcomes is clear. However, human health behaviors or decisions to make a change in behavior are not driven by physiology but rather a complexly interacting milieu of factors - cultural drivers unique to a community amongst them. Herein, we discuss several community settings where there are opportunities to promote a culture of health living. This review will focus on settings that embody the definitions of community and culture described previously.