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Vital Conditions for Health and Well-Being
What are the Vital Conditions?
Understanding why some communities prosper while others face significant challenges is essential for creating a more equitable future. The Vital Conditions for Health and Well-Being framework provides a clear and actionable way to explore this issue.
Vital conditions are the essential elements that every individual needs to reach their full potential. These include physical necessities like access to nutritious food, clean water, and safe housing. They also encompass social determinants such as quality education, stable employment, and financial security. Additionally, a sense of belonging through strong community ties and social support networks, as well as agency and empowerment—the ability to make choices and influence one’s environment—are critical. Finally, civic engagement ensures that all voices are heard in decision-making processes.
Investing in these vital conditions is crucial for fostering a thriving and equitable society. By addressing both immediate needs and long-term structural issues, we can help bridge the gaps that lead to disparities. Together, we can create a future where everyone has the opportunity to thrive, leading to healthier and more equitable communities for all.
Reliable Transportation: Access to safe, affordable, and efficient transportation that connects people to essential services, employment, education, and social opportunities.
Basic Needs for Health and Safety: Access to nutritious food, clean water, healthcare, and public safety, ensuring that everyone can live a secure and healthy life.
Humane Housing: Safe, affordable, and stable housing that provides space for well-being and enables individuals to thrive in their communities.
Meaningful Work and Wealth: Opportunities for fair employment and the ability to build financial stability, contributing to personal and community prosperity.
Lifelong Learning: Access to quality education and opportunities for continuous learning, fostering personal growth and the ability to adapt in a changing world.
Thriving Natural World: Access to sustainable resources, connection to nature, and safety from hazards. Features clean air, water, and soil, robust ecosystems that can sustainably supply essential resources, and accessible natural spaces that are protected from extreme weather, flooding, radiation, earthquakes, and pathogens.
Belonging + Civic Muscle: A strong sense of community and the empowerment to shape a shared world. This includes social support, active civic associations, freedom from stigma and discrimination, advocacy for civil and human rights, a vibrant cultural life, equitable access to information, and ample opportunities for civic participation through voting, volunteering, and public service.
Foundations of Vital Conditions
Over time, various frameworks have emerged to explain the factors influencing a population’s ability to thrive. Among these, the social determinants of health framework has significantly shaped our understanding of the ecosystem that fosters health and well-being. The concept of vital conditions aims not to replace these existing frameworks but to refine and evolve them into a more effective guide for achieving measurable systems change.
In 2017, a team led by ReThink Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation collaborated to articulate the essential conditions for health and well-being. Their goal was to build upon the social determinants of health by creating a framework that is both comprehensive and succinct.
The team aimed to meet the following criteria:
- The conditions should reflect widely held norms and expectations
- The language should be simple and easy to understand
- Each condition should align with available measures
- It should be apparent that each condition is integrally related to the others