Vital Life Certification Update!

from Debra

St. Leonard is a community that is dedicated to establishing a wellness community for staff and residents that is based around a socially supportive environment. St. Leonard was chosen as a beta community for a new wellness certification process called Vital Life. This certification like many credentialing agencies sets standards of practice to verify a high level of performance and transparency concerning our best practices and dedication to the mission of St. Leonard. This is important in today's world as the wellness industry is highly unregulated and this certification process ensures that great attention will be given to offer the best wellness services available. The Vital Life Community certification process is owned by Vital Life a not-for-profit organization that is affiliated with Vital Nation.

The certification process involves a rigorous development of wellness programming and measurement that provides information for scoring different areas of the campus concerning wellness programming satisfaction. The programming is based on the eight dimensions of wellness, which are environmental, physical, emotional, intellectual, social, nutritional, vocational and spiritual.

The overall goal of the Vital Life Community is to expand the Fun and Function stage of one's life and to reduce the frailty and failure aspects of the normal life span. Expanding the Fun and Function stage of life is a way to improve quality of life for both staff and residents. This helps to improve or stabilize retention and it is expected to reduce health care cost overall.

There are eight steps to the certification process and we are on step four. Each step is tiered to contain many different, but necessary steps to developing a wellness program that is geared for individual optimal health. Some important benefits that we have experienced, are a better sense of community and a deeper commitment to help everyone find meaningful opportunities to socialize. We have found that by doing wellness programming together, our personal commitment for wellness increases and fuels group and individual motivation to succeed at levels we never thought possible. Together, as we change the existing culture and change our personal wellness habits for the better, we can change the forecast of the health care industry and the wellness success of St. Leonard for generations to come.