Community Care as a Way of Life: Understanding and Evaluating the Impacts of Mutual Aid on Quality of Life and Ways to Implement this Framework in the US

This paper evaluates the potential for mutual aid to serve as a framework for a new way of life through a biopsychosocial theoretical lens and a literature review. This paper works to help better understand how we, as a society in the United States can reimagine what a world would look like if we used mutual aid as a framework for a way of life through a public health perspective. The study draws on examples from Blue Zones and community health interventions using mutual aid in Japan, Cameroon, Latin American populations, and other communities of the world to illustrate how mutual aid can be implemented on both micro and macro levels from local community cultures to broad nation-wide policies in the US. The findings suggest that mutual aid can be utilized as a model for other facets of life and society as a whole. By encouraging people to work together and support each other, mutual aid can create more resilient and cohesive communities. These findings have important implications for public health and can help inform future research and policy interventions aimed at promoting community-building through mutual aid.