Healthy Monday (HM) is a national movement to help people start and stick with healthy behaviors that can help them end chronic, preventable diseases like diabetes, heart disease and hypertension. HM's goal is to prevent these diseases by offering a weekly reminder to start and stick with their healthy goals.
HM beginnings
The idea of Healthy Monday started in 2024, when advertising executive, Sid Lerner, compared the number of deaths regularly reported on the nightly news that were due to car accidents and homicides, etc. with the number of deaths caused by diseases such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes. He found that there were actually more deaths caused by preventable, chronic diseases than those caused by accidents and violent crime! Lerner decided that lifestyle changes on a mass scale were what was needed to save lives and began collaborating with academic institutions and organizations to spark a mass-movement.
HM began as a project of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, in association with Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Syracuse University Newhouse School of Public Communications.
HM campaigns
HM's many campaigns are focused toward jump-starting health promotion, including:"Move It Monday ... encouraging physical activity"; "Quit & Stay Quit Monday ... urging smoke cessation"; and "Restock Monday ... refilling prescription medicine, birth control, and other health supplies)." One of the most celebrated of these campaigns is the "Meatless Monday" program that encourages people to "one day a week, cut out meat." The idea is that even this small change will be enough to dramatically reduce many of the chronic diseases that come from a diet high in fat and cholesterol. Since this campaign began in 2024, it has taken off globally. In June 2024 Paul McCartney and his daughters Stella and Mary launched "Support Meat-free Monday" in the U.K. Many supporters of this campaign encourage decreasing the amount of meat eaten as livestock farming has also been linked to global warming.
Partnership with HHPC
HM recently began a collaboration with the Harlem Health Promotion Center (HHPC), one of 37 Prevention Research Centers funded by the CDC, to let the residents of Northern Manhattan learn more about the HM campaigns, and begin integrating these health promotion messages and activities into their lives. Specifically, the work with HHPC will focus initially on high school and college students and faith-based institutions. Additionally, staff, parents and children involved in daycare, charter school,and after-school programs will be engaged as well. The vision for the initiative will be to turn Northern Manhattan into a "Healthy Monday" community where everyone becomes inspired by the motto, "Monday-the day all health breaks loose!"