Maybe you wondered how “Do The Local Motion Tampa Bay” came into being? The program was conceived and created in 2008 by Healthy Together, an organization that is dedicated to motivating people to make healthy choices and helping them connect with wellness solutions in their community.

Healthy Together is a non-profit (501c3) coalition of public, private and non-profit organizations collaborating make Tampa Bay a better place to live by promoting healthy living and removing the barriers to wellness.

You can learn about how our organization works to promote community wellness and workplace wellness by visiting our main website: www.Healthy-Together.org.

In today’s complex world of public health, many people don’t understand or have the support it takes to takes assume personal responsibility for their own health and well-being. This is reflected in Florida’s chronically poor ratings in national health studies. Did you know that Florida (and Tampa Bay is no exception) rates at the bottom of U.S. states for wellness? We have rating ssmoking, diabetes, obesity, road rage, infant mortality, etc. that drive our quality of life (and life spans) to some of the lowest in the nation. Many of these ratings are due in large part to circumstances over which individuals have a great deal of personal control – IF they realized it and knew what to do to help themselves.

When individuals do not or cannot act on their own behalf, poor health ratings result, leading to some of the highest insurance rates in America, unnecessary suffering and loss of quality of life. When individuals are given the knowledge and ability to act on their own behalf, the result is public demand for enlightened state legislation, radically improved health and well-being, and lower costs for everyone.

We seek to eliminate the complacent health attitudes of our community. We seek to educate, motivate and empower individuals to make positive choices for themselves and others.

As organizations go, Healthy Together is a young one. Founded in January, 2007, we haven’t let our youth limit our horizon. From our inception, we have seen ourselves as a regional organization, aligned with the national initiative, Healthy People 2010. Throughout Tampa Bay, the opportunity exists to bring a wide variety of organizations together to leverage our health and wellness resources.

However, it’s prudent to prove your operational models in one supportive area first, and thus we are perfecting two pilot programs in Tampa/Hillsborough County.

1. Community Wellness Program: Prime Time Sister Circles African American women are dying prematurely - in their 40s and 50s - at a much higher rate than any other group of women in the United States. Realizing that many of those deaths are preventable, PTSC is a proven, evidence-based program that provides 12-weeks of training and mind & body support for mature women. To date, 83% of the women who have participated across America have maintained their health improvements for more than a year.


2. Workplace Wellness Program: Do The Local Motion Tampa Bay In response to Florida’s burgeoning problems with obesity, urban isolation and environmental pollution, Healthy Together offers a program that blends Fitness with Community and Culture.

Wherever these two programs are begun, people find new power when they take control of their health. Healthy Together would like to see them implemented across our region and our state, and with your help and that our sponsors, we hope to make them available.

Those of us who work with Healthy Together like to say that we want to make the healthy choice the easy choice for everyone.