BOX 1.1AWHAT ARE VITAL CONDITIONS FOR HEALTH, WEALTH, AND WELL-BEING?
Our ability to survive and thrive—as individuals, institutions, industries, and even as a nation—depends on having a consistent set of vital conditions, such as clean air, fair pay, humane housing, early education, routine healthcare, and other pragmatic necessities (see ). The status and quality of the vital conditions shape each person’s ability to attain his or her best possible health, wealth, and well-being. Everyone—including the public, private, and nonprofit sectors and individuals, families, and communities—has a role to play in assuring the vital conditions, equitably, for all Americans.
When any of the vital conditions is not met, a variety of threats predictably arise. Those threats drive demand for urgent services that people facing adversity might need temporarily to regain their best possible health, wealth, and well-being (Box 1.1b). If services are unavailable or inadequate, the consequences of unmet vital conditions may be devastating to individuals, families and communities, and the costs, which are considerable, are borne by society. Everyone pays.
The changing states of these vital conditions and urgent services shape the prospects for people and places across the United States, now and for generations to come.
People have no say in the vital conditions that they inherit from their predecessors. At the same time, people today can transform current and future vital conditions, for better or for worse.
Note: Belonging and Civic Muscle forms the core of the other elements because it is both a vital condition unto itself and a practical capacity expressed through every other kind of work. Graphic of the seven vital conditions is adapted with permission from WE in the World, on behalf of the WIN Network, Rippel Foundation, and Well Being Trust.
