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Decorah city manager says community was behind decision to drop the Blue Zone

DECORAH, IOWA – The community of Decorah continues to move forward since a decision was made this summer  to withdraw from the Blue Zones program.

“The decision to move forward on our own was and is supported by the community,” City Manager Chad Bird told NIT Thursday.  In August, Mr. Bird had said that “the program didn’t fit well with our overall vision for health and wellness in the area.”

Mr. Bird said that Decorah has now set its sights higher than simply a Blue Zone community.

“Part of our reason for developing a different model is that we wanted to include community partners from a broader area than just the limits of Decorah,” Mr. Bird said. “We had begun, and continue to foster, relationships with Northeast Iowa Community College, local hospitals whom have a county wide presence and others in the outer reaches of Winneshiek County.”

As an example, a Food and Fitness Initiative is a broad program encompassing many school districts, programs and activities throughout the county and they are an important piece to the new wellness model that the Decorah area is pursuing.

Also, Mr. Bird said that wellness leaders “have developed a local initiative called WinnWell (Winneshiek Wellness) and are holding meetings to move these initiatives forward.

“We have broad support and we parted ways with Wellmark / Blue Zone folks amicably.”

In October, Osage also announced that it was scrapping the Blue Zone initiative but like Decorah, would pursue healthy alternatives. On October 14th, the Osage Blue Zones Power 9 Advisory Board said “We are taking some time to re-group and will be announcing a new name and focus for this project in the coming weeks. Thanks for your involvement, the plan is to make this even bigger and better.”

Officials from both Decorah and Osage had said that the efforts of volunteers could be put to better use than spending hours on the Blue Zone designation.  “It became evident to the group that their volunteer efforts could be better utilized in ways more in line with community resources and objectives,” Mr. Bird said in August.  Neither community had full-time employees working on the Blue Zone program, as both were designated as communities with populations under 10,000.

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