Presentations and Workshops
For starters, Vitalyst gave more than 50 presentations, workshops and group dialogues reaching more than 2,000 attendees. We engaged with each of Arizona’s major universities to explore collaborative opportunities. We connected with the great work of county public health departments and Community Health Improvement Plans. We met with cities and towns in urban and rural settings. We conducted outreach to major business groups. And, of course, we networked and developed emerging partnerships with philanthropies statewide.Webinars and Podcast
Vitalyst hosted six webinars focused on the Elements of a Healthy Community. That’s six hours of dialogue, featuring 24 guest experts that averaged live attendance or 100 people and accrued 500 cumulative recorded playbacks. You can experience any of these “radio show”-styled, energetic discussions today. Take your pick of the experts and listen now by clicking here.In late October, the Vitalyst Spark podcast launched. Three episodes and more than 7,900 feed hits later, we are encouraged and excited to produce more episodes and minisodes throughout 2018. Try the first 15-minute minisode, or dig into our growing catalog of 30-minute episodes by clicking here.

LiveWellAZ.org Relaunch
We built a website at livewellaz.org to help stakeholders be seen, celebrated and connected. As the amount of content and resources grew, we actually had to redesign and re-launch the site by late November. By “we,” we mean all of us, because the site couldn’t exist without statewide content contributors and the excellent work being undertaken to improve community health and well-being.

Each Element of a Healthy Community has its own page featuring: national resources, key Arizona players, great projects happening here, and projects from around the U.S. that should be happening here. Each page also has a resource submission button that all of you used to build these content pages. And now “we” have a site that continues to get better at helping us all work collaboratively without having to “recreate the wheel” of expertise. Experience the newly relaunched site by clicking here.

2018: Live Well Arizona
Our most clear learning from the 2017 Year of Healthy Communities experience is that one calendar year is too limiting for the discussions, collaborations, network building, and investment needed to reach our goals. And so we have resolved that, in 2018, we will continue just as we have in 2017. Our promise to you is that we will humbly continue to listen and learn as we work to support the collaborative, multi-sectoral work of building healthier communities.

Changes for the better are coming in 2018, starting with a change of name: from The 2017 Year of Healthy Communities to Live Well Arizona. Be one of the first to know when new developments like our Live Well Arizona mini-grants are announced. Sign up for our January 16 webinar today.