UC Davis Health Office of Wellness Education was created in 2022 to promote a fundamental change in the American health care system, shifting it from one focused mostly on disease care to one placing greater emphasis on well care. Disease care is essential once we become ill. But well care can help us stay free from disease and live a longer and more fulfilling life. Well care is built on how we take care of ourselves, and how we are cared for, far in advance of the onset of preventable illness or deterioration. This concept captures not just a state of being but a way of living. In large part, we achieve wellness by eating a healthful diet, moving often, and seeking physical and mental resilience. Although life inevitably presents stress and adversity, it also provides tangible options for promoting strength, flexibility and durability that can help us thrive in the face of the inevitable physical and emotional challenges we all experience in our unpredictable world.

The dilemma all of us face in seeking wellness is that even the best research produces conflicting answers to questions about food, activity, or dealing with the physical and emotional stresses of everyday life and the crises we all confront. Making things worse, most Americans don’t have access to the best research or authoritative consensus opinions, relying instead on pop science that extols the “five things you should eat every day” or the precise number of steps everyone needs to walk to stay fit. The Office of Wellness Education will seek to cut through the hype by providing sober critiques of the latest magazine-cover claims and objective information from experts who have their fingers on the pulse of the most recent science.