Get Healthy Utah News and Blog

Get Healthy Utah, in conjunction with the Utah League of Cities and Towns, is pleased to announce the newest Healthy Utah Community designees. Five cities and towns qualified this spring: Koosharem, Parowan, Springville, Taylorsville, and West Jordan.

Seven cities were redesignated: Blanding, Centerville, Draper, Manti, Nephi, Springdale, and Woods Cross. You can read about what each of these cities did at https://gethealthyutah.org/healthy-utah-community/designated-communities.

Koosharem

The Town of Koosharem is dedicated to meeting the needs of their small community and works to enhance the lives and health of their community members both young and old. They promote active living in young people with their free volleyball camp for girls aged 5-13 and plan to offer additional camps and clinics for additional sports, genders, and ages. They increase access to healthy eating through their free canning, freeze-drying, and bread-making classes for community members. Koosharem also offered three 6-month mental health resiliency classes to help community members overcome mental health challenges.  

Parowan

Parowan City serves the community by providing activities and programs that bring families together to support healthy, fun interactions. Their four parks and community pool provide gathering places for families and communities, and their citizens and Parowan Prevention Coalition are very active in supporting an active and healthy lifestyle. From their youth sports leagues and four new pickleball courts to their twice-monthly food bank handouts and safe medication disposal site, Parowan is dedicated to year-round health of all community members.

Springville

Springville City is committed to community health and well-being and offers a variety of services to meet the needs of community members. Their Fitness Fair and Silver Sneakers classes provide options to live active lifestyles, they try to ensure access to healthy foods by offering a summer lunch program for kids with the Utah Food Bank, and they offer Teen Mental Health Classes and free QPR trainings through the local library. The Healthy Springville Coalition is actively involved in representing community needs and providing Springville citizens with a healthy place to live.

Taylorsville

The City of Taylorsville has made great strides in ensuring every resident has access to healthy food, opportunities to be active, and resources to support mental health. They provide youth sports programs, a popular community 5k, new trail systems, an active farmers market, a food bank to help those in need, beautification of local parks, and a variety of community educational events. 

West Jordan

West Jordan City and their active health coalition are dedicated to creating opportunities for community members to live healthy and active lives. Focusing on holistic health, West Jordan offers seminars, events, and resources for residents to have a positive health experience. Offerings include many walking events on the Jordan River Trail, a produce swap at the monthly Community Market, support for the JSD Principal Pantry, mental health trainings for the police department, and daily lunch at the West Jordan Senior Center.

On February 5, 2025, the Utah Business of Health Event, organized by Get Healthy Utah, The Utah Worksite Wellness Council, and Utah Community Builders, took place at the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium. The event, themed "Well Connected," brought together 70 business and health leaders from across Utah to explore the impact of social connections on employee and community well-being. Highlights included expert panels and roundtable discussions on enhancing professional and personal networks, team engagement, burnout prevention, and leadership development. The event emphasized the importance of collaborative efforts to improve the health and quality of life for all Utahns.

Sponsors

EvolvedMD integrates mental health services into primary care, addressing limited access, provider shortages, and fragmented care. Their approach enhances patient outcomes, reduces costs, and supports both patients and providers with significantly better results in depression and anxiety.

Health Movement, founded by Rich Miller, introduced the a universal health tracking platform. This innovative platform offers free solutions for data collection, analysis, and reporting, enhancing accessibility for various organizations.

Expert Panel

The Utah Wellbeing Project, presented by Dr. Courtney Flint, examines the factors contributing to a good life across Utah's communities. The project's research indicates that wellbeing includes physical and mental health, social connections, and living standards. Key findings reveal that while domains like safety, family, and connection with nature are highly rated, areas such as education, social connections, and transportation need improvement. Community connection and activities like walking and biking correlate with higher wellbeing. Concerns vary, with some desiring faster economic development for more opportunities, while others worry about traffic and loss of small-town feel. Top concerns statewide include water supply, air quality, and affordable housing. Overall, businesses can play an important role in enhancing community wellbeing

The University of Utah Resiliency Center, under the direction of Dr. Amy Locke, is dedicated to promoting optimal health and well-being using a holistic, people-centered strategy. The center tackles burnout and moral distress, fostering a culture of community, connection, and purpose through initiatives like resilience-building programs and Code Lavender for crisis support. It uses a three-tiered support system and offers resources like wellbeing toolkits, aiming to empower individuals and improve the overall work environment. This approach seeks to address stress injuries and improve joy in work by focusing on the needs of individuals, teams, and leadership within the organization.

Nicole Carpenter's presentation on strengths-based leadership emphasizes that effective leaders leverage their authentic selves and build teams with complementary skills. The core idea is to focus on individuals' strengths rather than weaknesses to boost productivity and create a positive work environment. By understanding team strengths and navigating dynamics effectively, leaders can foster collaboration and improve communication. A strengths-based approach aims to maximize potential and improve overall performance, as highlighted by the ElevateHER Challenge, which promotes women in leadership and equitable practices.

Round Table Discussions

During the 2025 Utah Business of Health Roundtables, participants engaged in dynamic discussions, rotating through tables guided by knowledgeable moderators. They shared insights, explored current practices, and discussed resources. The event created an environment of learning and collaboration, leaving participants inspired and equipped with practical strategies to implement in their workplaces. The roundtable groups included:

• Utah Wellbeing Survey
• Resiliency Center Programs
• Gallup Strengths-Based Leadership
• Division of Outdoor Recreation
• Health Movement
• One Kind Act a Day
• General Well Connected Table

Conclusion

Participants left feeling motivated to promote employee mental health and were equipped with the resources and strategies to make a difference. We are grateful to everyone who attended and to the amazing partners, sponsors, and speakers who made this event possible!

Key Takeaways:

• Generally, there is a strong correlation between social connection and positive health outcomes
• Social connections may be protective against heart disease–related deaths
• Social connections increase self-management of diabetes
• Communities can improve social connection for residents through improving the built environment, particularly through increasing green spaces

Eliza Prickett is a Master’s student in Public Health at Brigham Young University. As part of her program, she prepared a literature review on the effects social connectedness has on health outcomes. A portion of her review is included below. The literature review in its entirety can be viewed here.

Human beings thrive with social connections, and this connection impacts those in the community. Social connection is “the size and diversity of one's social network and roles, the functions these relationships serve, and their positive or negative qualities,” according to the CDC (CDC, 2024).  Lack of social connection is “associated with chronic physical symptoms, frailty, coronary heart disease, malnutrition, hospital readmission, reduced vaccine uptake, early mortality, depression, social anxiety, psychosis, cognitive impairment in later life, and suicidal ideation” (Morina et al., 2021).  Increasing social connection helps the individual and compounds itself, growing with each connection until the entire community is positively impacted.

An emerging way to increase social connection, especially in urban environments, is to include greenspace and Public Open Spaces (POS) in urban planning. Social isolation, loneliness, and social belonging are all impacted by the built environment (Reed & Bohr, 2020). Maintaining these built environments is essential for maintaining social connections, as there is a direct influence on the upkeep of a social environment and mental health connections (Leyden et al., 2011; Sullivan & Chang, 2011). These built environments can create spaces for social connections to flourish. Making these social environments green, whether through flowers and trees or just having grass, can add to the social benefit these spaces create for communities in Utah. As new communities continue to grow and develop in Utah, providing ways to increase social connection has many long-term benefits for mental and emotional health and overall physical health.

CDC. (2024, May 16). Social Connection. Social Connection. https://cdc.gov/social-connectedness/about/index.html

Morina, N., Kip, A., Hoppen, T. H., Priebe, S., & Meyer, T. (2021). Potential impact of physical distancing on physical and mental health: a rapid narrative umbrella review of meta-analyses on the link between social connection and health. BMJ Open, 11(3), e042335. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-042335

Reed, S., & Bohr, J. (2020). The Influence of Local Built Environments on Social Wellbeing: a Community’s Experience with Social Isolation, Social Loneliness, and Social Belonging. International Journal of Community Well-Being. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42413-020-00091-6

Leyden, K. M., Goldberg, A., & Duval, R. D. (2011). The built environment, maintenance of the public sphere and connections to others and to place: an examination of 10 international cities. Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, 4(1), 25–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/17549175.2011.559946

Sullivan, W. C., & Chang, C.-Y. (2011). Mental Health and the Built Environment. Making Healthy Places, 106–116. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-036-1_7

Get Healthy Utah worked with the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute to learn more about city and town leaders’ attitudes and strategies regarding the Healthy Utah Community Designation and community health. 139 leaders from 75 Utah cities and towns responded. 

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Many city and town leaders are interested in earning the Healthy Utah Community Designation! If you’re one, check out our website to learn more about what your community needs to do to qualify.
• The Healthy Utah Community Designation has a positive, useful impact.

• Health is a high priority for community leaders across the state. Compared to our 2020 survey, more respondents now believe that municipal governments have a role in community health.
• The Healthy Utah Community Designation focus areas (Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Mental Health) have different levels of prioritization:
  • In Nutrition, many leaders have neutral sentiments about action items, with a notable portion lacking plans for implementation. 
  • Physical Activity sees a strong commitment to both actions and their implementation. 
  • Mental Health is a critical issue across the state, and leaders want to enhance mental health resources.
• The most significant barrier communities face in implementing strategies is funding.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the survey! We appreciate your help, and we look forward to using these insights to continue improving our resources and the Healthy Utah Community designation. You can view the whole report on our website.