ELIA Wellness
Empowering people to whole-person health™.
ELIA® Wellness is an initiative of Adventist Health.
Our mission is to educate and empower the community in whole-person health to help prevent and manage lifestyle disease.
Our vision is to be a leader in whole-person health by collaborating with leading health professionals and experts to innovate and promote evidence-based lifestyle medicine resources through our networks.
We promote whole-person health through the 7 Dimensions of Wellness: emotionally thriving, physically energised, socially connected, vocational enriched, spiritually empowered, intellectually engaged, and environmentally attuned.
Our Name is an acronym, which is Empowering Lifestyle Innovation & Advocates.
The History of Adventist Health and ELIA Wellness.
Every mission starts with a story; ours was pivotal. In 1863, our newly formed grass-roots organisation faced a health crisis. All of our leaders were too sick to attend a scheduled meeting, halting the activities of our fledgling organisation. Through this crisis, a "radical" vision was presented of a new healthcare approach that emphasised preventing illness, enhancing the quality of life and promoting longevity through a whole-person framework.
Our first health facilities, called sanitariums, were places where patients, and their entire family, would learn to be well.
From these humble beginnings, we expanded into health research and education, cared for people's health through our hospitals and medical clinics, created and launched major health education initiatives (including the fight against smoking), and established the early health food industry.
Today, through our advances in lifestyle research, we recognise that wellness encompasses more than just our mind, body and good nutrition. Whole-person health encompasses physical, social, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, environmental and vocational dimensions, which form the foundation of our approach to wellness today.
Not only did our "radical" vision restore the health of our leaders in 1863, but now, over 150 years later, the vision to empower people to whole-person health is at the core of our movement and is expressed through our vision, mission and activities. Adventist Health launched ELIA Wellness in 2016 to spearhead its whole-person health research, public education and engagement activities.