With all of the prognosticators and experts weighing in on the expected latest Health & Wellness trends for 2012, I’m going to choose to do something different this year. Yes, rather than anticipate where people will be heading with their healthy lifestyle behaviors and choices, I’d like to paint a point-by-point vision of hope for our society that will serve as a guide for achieving a higher degree of Health. It goes like this: » » » »

Healthy Living community leaders and organizations who understand and advocate the “big picture” of improving health and sustainability in their communities are often finding that a hands-on approach is one of the most effective ways to get the message across. » » » »

Despite increased national attention on the issue of obesity, improved quality of life in the United States is getting worse. According to a report by the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, adult obesity rates increased in 28 states in the past year, and decreased only in the District of Columbia. » » » »

In this age of shared responsibility, and with the ease of access to information gathered and shared both online and offline, it’s no surprise to see the public stepping up to provide innovative and unique socially responsible solutions. Crowd sourcing, a trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies to achieve goals, has become quite a social networking tool that is helping to provide socially responsible solutions to many of society’s problems and restore health to many as a result. » » » »

There’s a responsibility movement underway in Atlanta.

Discovering that the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau had lost a competitive bid to Orlando for a conference because Atlanta didn’t have an environmental program in place, business leaders and residents several years ago decided to embrace environmental sustainability as a core practice in their planning and programming. This commitment eventually organized around a new initiative, The Zero Waste Zone (ZWZ) in downtown Atlanta. » » » »