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The LeadWell Foundation's core mandate is to improve the capacity of leaders to contribute to the societal well-being and broadly-defined health of our environments, communities, and organizations. We view this as the primary goal of societal leadership, and our work spans the related concepts of wellness and well-being.
Defining Well-being and Wellness
As a term, Well-being dates from 1582, and is defined as the state of being happy, healthy, or prosperous. Our work focuses on societal, community, and organizational well-being, and how this can better be defined, measured, and advanced by societal leaders.
By comparison, Wellness is a slightly younger concept dating from 1653, and is defined as the quality or state of being in good health, especially as an actively sought goal. In our work, wellness relates primarily to the capacity of individual societal leaders, and how they seek to develop and maintain their personal health and wellbeing within the six dimensions of wellness listed below.
Measuring Societal Progress
The Foundation draws upon the work of several organizations to help inform how we can define and measure our well-being and broader societal progress:
Canadian Index of Wellbeing
Led by the Atkinson Charitable Foundation, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing is one of the leading international examples of broader societal progress indicators.
 The initiative brings together a range of governmental, community, and academic organizations to spearhead the development of a practical set of indicators for each of the index's eight "domains" of well-being.
See the first report of the CIW on the domains of Living Standards, Health Populations and Community Vitality.
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Vital Signs - Community Foundations of Canada
Vital Signs is an annual community check-up conducted by community foundations across Canada that measures the vitality of our cities, identifies significant trends, and assigns grades in at least ten areas critical to quality of life.
 Vital Signs is based on a project of the Toronto Community Foundation and is coordinated nationally by Community Foundations of Canada. The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation provided critical support for the national expansion of the Vital Signs program.
Each city's report card data is a compilation of numerous research sources, much of it local, that help communities make connections between issues and trends in different areas. The findings are presented in a reader friendly format to make them as accessible as possible.
View local reports, and learn how to get involved in your community's Vital Signs project.
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Measuring the Progress of Societies (OECD)
 The Global Project on Measuring the Progress of Societies exists to foster the development of sets of key economic, social and environmental indicators to provide a comprehensive picture of how the well-being of a society is evolving. It also seeks to encourage the use of indicator sets to inform and promote evidence-based decision-making, within and across the public, private and citizen sectors. The project is open to all sectors of society, building both on good practice and innovative research work.
Visit the project's Knowledge Base to search for a range of initiatives, reports, and tools.
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National Accounts of Well-being (nef)
What are National Accounts of Well-being and why do we need them?
nef has set out a radical proposal to guide the direction of modern societies and the lives of people who live in them. In contrast to the conventional narrow focus on economic indicators, it calls for governments to directly and regularly measure people’s subjective well-being: their experiences, feelings and perceptions of how their lives are going, as a new way of assessing societal progress.
Visit the nef National Accounts of Well-being site for a range of resources, articles, and videos.
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Dimensions of Wellness
The Foundation defines wellness as an interactive process of becoming aware of and deliberately practicing healthy choices to create a more successful and balanced lifestyle, both individually and from a broader societal perspective. The Foundation’s working definition includes consideration of the following dimensions of wellness*:
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Physical – understanding and consistently practicing the key elements of maintaining physical health through proper exercise, diet, and disease prevention. |
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Occupational – being able to build success and satisfaction in one’s chosen work or career path, consistent with your personal skills and interests. |
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Social – being aware of interdependencies between individuals and groups in society, and emphasizing voluntary contributions back to broader society (e.g., to communities, or organizations within them). |
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Intellectual – recognizing the need to continually utilize one’s creative and mental skills, and deliberately building new skills in this area over time |
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Emotional – developing a positive emotional self-image, and learning deliberate skills to maintain and build emotional fitness throughout one’s life. |
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Spiritual – independent of any particular religion or belief system, recognizing the depth and breadth of human experience, and its links with the natural world. |
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*adapted from and with acknowledgment to the National Wellness Institute and the Six Dimensional Model of Wellness
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Societal Leadership
