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Vital Conditions
for Health and
Well-Being

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A woman in a wheelchair with a child drawing on a easel.
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Why do some populations thrive and prosper while others struggle and suffer? The Vital Conditions for Health and Well-Being is a framework that addresses this question in a way that is at once understandable, relatable, and actionable.

Simply put, vital conditions are the properties of places and institutions that we all need all the time to reach our full potential. They include physical necessities like food, water, and humane housing, but also include things that are harder to quantify, like a sense of belonging and agency or civic muscle. Investments in these conditions are necessary to create an equitable, thriving future for ourselves and for generations to come.

A man with a beard and a little boy on his shoulders.
A woman in a wheelchair with a child drawing on a easel.
An older man sitting on a bench holding a cane.
A family is running in a park with a city in the background.

How are the vital conditions different from previous models?

The vital conditions are an evolution, not a replacement, of the social determinants model that has been prevalent since its emergence in the early 2000s.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines the social determinants of health as “the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life.”

Vital Conditions vs. Urgent Services

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An older woman and a young girl looking out a window.
A man with dreadlocks standing on a street.
A woman in a wheelchair reading a book.
A group of people holding hands on a couch.

The vital conditions framework enables several important shifts in the way that people think about health and well-being. One of the most important is recognizing the shortcomings of over-reliance on urgent services.

Urgent services are broadly defined as all of the services that anyone under adversity would need to temporarily regain or restore their health and well-being. These include everything from urgent care clinics to food pantries and homeless shelters.

Urgent services are necessary for a safe, healthy, and thriving community. However, existing ways of thinking about health and well-being often lead to over-investing in urgent services and under-investing in vital conditions.

This creates a negative cycle in which the lack of vital conditions creates excess demand for and reliance on these urgent services. Community leaders and institutions in turn often become hyper-focused on providing more urgent services to meet the demand. It is easy to see how this cycle can perpetuate an over-emphasis on urgent services and obscure the need for identifying and improving root causes.

The truth is that no amount of urgent services can ever produce thriving. The vital conditions model provides a framework for communities to break out of this negative cycle and create a better system that supports thriving for all.

A man with a beard and a little boy on his shoulders.
An older woman and a young girl looking out a window.
A man with dreadlocks standing on a street.
A woman in a wheelchair reading a book.
A group of people holding hands on a couch.

What is a Well-Being Portfolio?

The importance of vital conditions becomes even easier to see when combined alongside urgent services in a full well-being portfolio. In times of crisis, urgent services are lifesaving and life-altering. But urgent services cannot produce the experience of thriving. The path to thriving goes through vital conditions. They shape the choices, opportunities, and challenges that we encounter throughout our lives, from birth to death and across generations.

When vital conditions are disrupted or denied, people struggle and suffer, driving demand for urgent services, which in turn diverts even more resources from vital conditions. The best way to escape this downward spiral is through a balanced portfolio of investments in both vital conditions and urgent services.

When stewards from all walks of life are able to negotiate investment priorities across the well-being portfolio, the experience reliably opens space for honest exchange about the legacies we want to pass on to future generations and what it takes for everyone to thrive together—no exceptions.

Federal Plan Uses the Vital Conditions Framework

In November 2022, the federal government released its interagency plan for Equitable Long-Term Recovery and Resilience (ELTTR). With commitments from more than 70 federal agencies, this landmark plan outlines a whole-of-government approach to unlock America’s full potential for all people and places to thrive together. It orients federal action around vital conditions that are essential for all people and places to thrive.

“Adopting this framework is a major step in reflecting the reality of people’s lives, as well as the interdependence of government agency missions to make real and lasting improvements in population health,” said Rippel President and CEO Becky Payne, former Lead, Federal Interagency Workgroup for Equitable Long-Term Recovery and Resilience at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Read her full statement.

As of February 2025, the ELTRR is no longer available on the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion website. Please click here to view an archived version of the original web page featuring the ELTRR. Download the Plan and its recommendations below:

Federal Plan for Equitable Long-Term Recovery and Resilience (ELTRR):

Discover More Users Of the Vital Conditions Framework

An increasing number of organizations are embracing the vital conditions framework to drive meaningful change. Explore these organizations and their work.

Explore More Users

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Tools and Publications

Webinars and Videos

  • Watch a ReThink Health Toolbox webinar that offers an introduction to the vital conditions framework
  • Watch this explainer video on the vital conditions for health and well-being produced by Healthy Communities Delaware
  • In this video, Build Healthy Places Network’s Co-Executive Director, Ruth Thomas-Squance speaks with Bobby Milstein from The Rippel Foundation on how public health practitioners can expand on the vital conditions framework

Explore additional resources and connect with fellow stewards through: