Adventist Healthcare has welcomed healthy lifestyle advocate ELIA Wellness under its corporate umbrella.
Promoting a healthy lifestyle has been a priority of Adventist HealthCare’s Sydney Adventist Hospital since the hospital first opened in 1903 as a Sanitarium—a place where people learned to stay well. It has also been a continuing aim of Adventist HealthCare’s other healthcare service, San Day Surgery Hornsby, which was the first purpose-built day surgery in NSW when it opened in 1986.
ELIA Wellness was formed in 2016 to champion the cause of lifestyle medicine in research, policy and practice. Its advocacy to help individuals achieve whole-person health includes the 7 Dimensions of Wellness Index™, an analysis tool which is utilised in their wellness-enhancing programs.
ELIA Wellness will be financially independent from Sydney Adventist Hospital however will benefit from the alliance, and will complement the hospital’s mission of helping promote health and healing of the body, mind and spirit of patients, staff and the wider community.
“This is an exciting advance for both Adventist HealthCare and ELIA Wellness,” said Adventist HealthCare chief executive officer Brett Goods.
“At Adventist HealthCare we relish our role as a provider of acute, comprehensive and expert care to meet the needs of our community when they are most vulnerable.
“Critically, however, it is the Adventist principles of a healthy and active lifestyle that underpin the breadth of the wholistic care that we aim to offer our 175,000 patients a year.
“In providing that care, we are buoyed by the increasing recognition of the joys and the physical and mental rewards of actively seeking and following a healthy lifestyle.
“ELIA Wellness’s resounding success with its Live More Project, Wellness App, Lifestyle Medicine Summit, Partner training program, and proactive educational health and wellness resources, provide an opportunity to respond to community interest.
“We are proud that the wider community will benefit from research and advice with potential to help prevent and manage chronic disease as a result of collaboration with ELIA Wellness.
“This integration will help complement our care for our community. It is a forward-thinking step of which we are delighted to be part.”
ELIA Wellness executive director Geraldine Przybylko, agrees. “We are thrilled that the extensive work of ELIA Wellness will be expanded by its association with Adventist HealthCare and Sydney Adventist Hospital and will further enable us to empower and transform the wider community to achieve whole-person health,” she said.
“The Adventist community has long understood the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. In fact, Seventh-day Adventists in Loma Linda, USA, were identified by Dan Buettner in National Geographic as one of five regions in the world—Blue Zones—where people live healthier for longer. Adventist health principles and lifestyle were key contributors to their longevity, with Adventists living up to 10 quality years longer than the rest of the nation.
“Adventists today welcome the growing body of scientific evidence confirming that lifestyle interventions can help prevent, manage or arrest disease, with lifestyle medicine being one of the most exciting and fastest-growing disciplines in healthcare today.
“This new alignment brings evidence-based acute clinical and lifestyle medicine together, building on both Adventist HealthCare’s rich heritage and ELIA Wellness’s innovation in the area of health and wellness to create a stronger platform to bring health, hope and healing to the community.”
ELIA Wellness will be overseen by a management committee of expert, passionate and committed individuals and will continue to provide services across Australia and New Zealand, including:
- Lifestyle medicine research to improve knowledge and practice
- Resource development for clinical, professional and community engagement
- Increasing access to lifestyle medicine through innovating digital services
- Training partners to provide location-based engagement for individuals
- Enhancing patient outcomes through collaboration with clinical partners
- Nurturing a lifestyle medicine community through resources and industry news.
