2019 Live Well San Diego Annual Impact Report
2019 Live Well San Diego Annual Impact Report
COLLECTIVE ACTIONS ARE CREATING POSITIVE IMPACTS
Live Well San Diego is the vision for a region that is Building Better Health, Living Safely and Thriving. Developed in 2010, the vision was built on the collective impact model which requires that cross-sector organizations come together in support of a common agenda, agree to track progress in the same way, and coordinate efforts to continuously improve programs and initiatives that positively affect quality of life in San Diego County.
As of June 30, 2019, 451 Recognized Partners have committed to the vision and are working with the County of San Diego as well as community leaders and organizations across the region in support of a better quality of life for all 3.3 million San Diego County residents.
This report includes success stories submitted by Partners from July 2018 through June 2019. These stories are grouped by impact into the Live Well San Diego 5 Areas of Influence: Health, Knowledge, Standard of Living, Community and Social. Each section highlights video, data and personal stories showing how collective actions and aligned efforts are moving the dial on the Live Well San Diego Top 10 Indicators which define what it means to live well in San Diego.
Learn about the Live Well San Diego measurements for success
Learn about Live Well San Diego Recognized Partners
Learn what's being done to achieve the Live Well San Diego vision
Learn about new opportunities to participate in Live Well San Diego
SIGNATURE EVENTS & INITIATIVES
Live Well San Diego Signature Events and Initiatives bring individuals, families and organizations together in support of healthy, safe and thriving communities. The events and initiatives described below are just a few examples of the incredible accomplishments that have been achieved over the past year when partners join together to work towards common goals.
The 2018 Live Well San Diego 5K and Kids 1-Mile Fun Run brought together more than 2,500 San Diegans on July 29th in support of a healthy, safe and thriving San Diego County and benefited the life-saving work of the San Diego Blood Bank. In the month leading up to the race, the 5K Fitness Challenge helped 1,564 people get prepared to run or walk in the race with many Recognized Partners contributing resources to the daily challenges.
The second annual Live Well San Diego Data Summit brought together nearly 200 partners, planners and other built environment stakeholders to discover new data available for municipalities and to discuss a new measurement tool for assessing community walkability. Built Environments are not measured consistently at a national, regional and local level. The summit provided an opportunity to introduce a potential solution, seek buy-in from other jurisdictions, and move forward with implementation locally to demonstrate its use.
The third annual Live Well Advance: Connecting the Unconnected to Live Well brought together 1,300 partners and stakeholders to network, learn about new tools and best practices, and participate in breakout sessions on October 2, 2018. The event created an opportunity for attendees to connect and learn how to leverage each other’s resources through collaboration to help the community. As a result of a connection made at the 2018 Advance, Partnerships with Industry is now collaborating with Starbucks to create additional employment opportunities for residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
In 2019, the Multiple Species Conservation Program, a 50-year initiative that protects and connects the most valuable biological habitats in San Diego County, turned 20. It was envisioned to create the largest urban preserve in the country, while allowing development to occur in less sensitive areas. It works across political boundaries, providing a framework for region-wide collaboration on conservation efforts. Partners include the County of San Diego, City of Imperial Beach , City of Chula Vista , City of National City , City of Coronado , City of Lemon Grove , City of La Mesa , City of El Cajon, City of Santee, City of Poway, City of Del Mar, City of San Diego , the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, California Department of Fish and Wildlife and community stakeholders.
Love Your Heart is an annual event in which organizations from across the U.S. and Mexico join together to provide free blood pressure screenings to the public on Valentine's Day, February 14. It began in 2012 with a simple mission – help prevent heart disease and stroke to reduce the percentage of deaths in San Diego County due to chronic disease. In 2019, partnerships expanded to include a total of 204 sites representing every sector – from businesses to non-profits, governments to schools, healthcare to emergency services, and media to faith-based organizations. Efforts to collaborate across borders also continued through Ama Tu Corazón which reaches participants binationally at sites along the United States-Mexico border. As a result of efforts across North America, on February 14, 2019, Love Your Heart partners worked together to host 43,524 blood pressure screenings at 375 sites.
Data is being used by organizations to inform planning and improvement metrics in the San Diego Region. In 2019, the County of San Diego and other community partners developed new ways to house and visualize data to be more interactive and user-friendly. The Live Well San Diego Top 10 Indicators' new site helps users explore data by city or regional area and view data trends and additional expanded indicator data in real-time. The Live Well San Diego Open Data Portal merged with the County of San Diego Open Data Portal to serve as a single repository for the most recent community data, tools, and resources for individuals and organizations to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, design data visualizations, and more.
The 2019 Communications Summit held at the San Diego LGBT Community Center brought together hundreds of communications professionals from partner organizations to network and learn ways to better collaborate and align messaging surrounding the Live Well San Diego vision. San Diego Financial Literacy Center, YMCA of San Diego County, Sirius Fitness and ABC 10 shared their unique communications strategies along with a special keynote address to teach attendees about using Community-Based Social Marketing as a tool for influencing behavior change.
Worksite wellness programs can lead to positive change for employees and organizations, as they have the potential to impact a person's health-related behaviors and decrease risk of disease while also improving productivity, retention, and staff morale and decreasing healthcare costs and absenteeism. In 2019, resources were developed to assist employers with developing improved worksite wellness programs, including a Live Well @ Work Toolkit, Diabetes Prevention Toolkit, technical assistance to increase breastfeeding-friendly workplaces, and nutrition guideline best practices for the workplace.
Climate Action Plans are long-range planning documents designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to ensure a healthier and more sustainable future for generations to come. Government agencies countywide are developing and implementing Climate Action Plan strategies to reduce community-wide emissions to target levels. In February 2018, the County of San Diego adopted their plan and, in its first year of implementation, reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 103,643 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2e) and is on track to meet the its 2020 target of 132,205 MT CO2e (78% toward the target). The plan outlines a set of measures that focus on conserving energy and water, reducing the distance that residents need to drive to purchase goods and services, and reducing the amount of waste that each person generates, among other efforts in order to reduce the County’s contribution to climate change.
In 2019, the County of San Diego, along with hundreds of dedicated stakeholders, worked together to create a Blueprint for Mental Health Reform: A Strategic New Approach Addressing the Intersection of Mental Health, Homelessness and Criminal Justice in San Diego County, which recommends changes in how we approach mental illness and criminal justice in San Diego County. The blueprint provides 10 recommendations for various stakeholders to work together to address the needs of individuals living with mental illness and co-occurring substance use disorders. It includes solutions to enhance systems of care for individuals living with mental illness, focused on those that intersect with criminal justice and public safety, and work toward common goals for the citizens we serve.
Communities of Excellence 2026 is a national learning collaborative of communities across the country that implements the Communities of Excellence Framework to enable communities and their residents to achieve better health outcomes, higher educational attainment, and economic vitality. The framework unites sectors and leaders across communities to work together, share successes, challenges, ideas and best practices, and learn from each other on their performance excellence journey. Both the Live Well San Diego South Region Leadership Team and North County Community Leadership Team, whose membership is composed of individual and organizational community partners, are formally a part of this initiative, working toward change in their communities. The Live Well San Diego South Region Leadership Team is in the third year of their journey, while the North County Community Leadership Team is in their second.