When you hear the word wellness, is your first thought around exercise or diet? While physical health is part of it, true whole-person wellness encapsulates much more. In fact, research shows that only about 20% of health outcomes are related to medical care, while the remaining 80% stem from social drivers of health (DOH) like socioeconomic, environmental, and behavioral factors.
This is why “sick care,” or a reactive approach to care, no longer meets the moment. The future of aging is proactive wellness: helping older adults feel engaged, connected, and supported long before a health challenge pops up.
How can senior living communities proactively foster overall wellness, to help residents live lives full of purpose and engagement? A proven framework is ICAA’s seven dimensions of wellness: intellectual, physical, social, spiritual, vocational, emotional, and environmental. Armed with these dimensions, staff can be empowered to proactively create personalized engagement that supports residents’ well-being.
Get to know residents holistically
Belonging begins with being seen and understood. When residents feel like their story matters, they’re more likely to engage, and staff gain valuable insights to shape meaningful experiences.
The intake process is a natural place to start. Thoughtfully designed questions help capture each individual’s interests and preferences beyond basic health needs. For example:
- Intellectual: What topics do you love learning about?
- Physical: What activities do you enjoy, or what health goals do you have?
- Social: How do you like to connect with others—big groups or one-on-one?
- Spiritual: Are there traditions or practices that are important to you?
- Vocational: Do you have skills or hobbies you’d like to share?
- Emotional: What brings you comfort or makes you feel at home?
- Environmental: What activities do you enjoy doing outside?
Using technology can make this process easier. AI-powered onboarding tools can transcribe interviews, organize notes into a digital profile, and highlight resident preferences that your team can use to plan meaningful activities. Having this information at your team’s fingertips simplifies personalization and ensures that each resident’s life story is honored.
Design engagement that supports overall wellness
A well-rounded activity calendar promotes holistic wellness and keeps programming fresh. Offering a mix of activities across the seven dimensions provides balance and helps meet life enrichment standards. Here are a few ideas:
- Intellectual: trivia nights, book clubs, guest speakers
- Physical: chair yoga, tai chi, walking groups
- Social: themed dinners, game nights, community events
- Spiritual: meditation, music circles, religious services
- Vocational: mentoring programs, resident-led classes
- Emotional: art therapy, journaling, pet visits
- Environmental: gardening, birdwatching, nature walks
Digital engagement platforms can simplify planning further by color-coding activities by dimension, making it easy to spot gaps at a glance. Some platforms even integrate AI to suggest ideas based on resident interests, reducing the mental load on staff.
For tips on how to create activity ideas by dimension of wellness, you can read our recent blog post about tips to generate activity ideas using AI: https://lifeloop.com/resources/blog/how-to-get-unlimited-senior-living-activity-calendar-ideas-lifeloop
Use data to refine and personalize
Just as important as planning ahead is reflecting back to see how activities performed. An engagement platform that includes data insights can help you quickly pull reports to spot participation trends across your community, or multiple communities. At a glance, you can see whether you offered activity types in each dimension of wellness the previous month, or which activities were the top attended. Then, you can decide which activities to retire or which to create more of.
In addition to community-wide trends, it’s just as important to look at engagement on an individual level. Resident-level insights can reveal subtle changes that might otherwise go unnoticed. For example, if your data shows that Susan hasn’t attended any spiritual programs this month—after previously joining them regularly—it’s a cue to check in. Maybe her interests have shifted, or there’s another reason she’s pulling back. Either way, having this visibility gives staff the opportunity to respond proactively and suggest alternatives that keep her feeling connected and fulfilled.
Creating a culture of wellness
As we age, it becomes more and more important to invest energy into a wide array of wellness practices. By fostering engagement across all dimensions of wellness, communities can create environments where residents not only live longer, but better.
