Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 Mar/Apr;133(2):136-141.
doi: 10.1177/0033354918754540. Epub 2018 Feb 16.

Emotional Well-Being and Public Health: Proposal for a Model National Initiative

Sophie C Feller  1 , Enrico G Castillo  2   3 , Jared M Greenberg  2   4 , Pilar Abascal  2 , Richard Van Horn  5 , Kenneth B Wells  1   2   6 ; University of California, Los Angeles Community Translational Science Team  1
Affiliations

Emotional Well-Being and Public Health: Proposal for a Model National Initiative

Sophie C Feller et al. Public Health Rep. 2018 Mar/Apr.

Abstract

In 2011, the National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council named mental and emotional well-being as 1 of 7 priority areas for the National Prevention Strategy. In this article, we discuss emotional well-being as a scientific concept and its relevance to public health. We review evidence that supports the association between emotional well-being and health. We propose a national emotional well-being initiative and describe its 6 components: systematic measurement of emotional well-being, identification of the drivers of emotional well-being, formation of partnerships with diverse stakeholders, implementation and dissemination of evidence-based interventions to promote emotional well-being and its drivers, development of public health messaging, and identification of and strategies to address disparities in emotional well-being and its drivers. Finally, we discuss ways in which a national emotional well-being initiative would complement current public health efforts and the potential challenges to such an initiative.

Keywords: community health; emotional well-being; health policy; mental health; prevention; public health; quality of life; well-being.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

References

    1. Berkman LF. Social epidemiology: social determinants of health in the United States: are we losing ground? Annu Rev Public Health. 2009;30:27–41. - PubMed
    1. Xu J, Murphy SL, Kochanek KD, Arias E. Mortality in the United States, 2015. NCHS Data Brief. 2016;267:1–8. - PubMed
    1. Ong AD, Mroczek DK, Riffin C. The health significance of positive emotions in adulthood and later life. Soc Personal Psychol Compass. 2011;5(8):538–551. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kimm H, Sull JW, Gombojav B, Yi SW, Ohrr H. Life satisfaction and mortality in elderly people: the Kangwha Cohort Study. BMC Public Health. 2012;12(1):54. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Boehm JK, Winning A, Segerstrom S, Kubzansky LD. Variability modifies life satisfaction’s association with mortality risk in older adults. Psychol Sci. 2015;26(7):1063–1070. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types