MARISSA BOJIUC, Mirror Contributing Writer
Merging science with fun experiences and action-oriented coaching, the UCLA Family Commons will open its own Santa Monica Family Wellness Center on Thursday, February 4. Its initiative is simple: inspire families to discover their unique potential for well-being.
The Family Commons received a huge boost in 2007 after Dianne Flannery, Ph.D, and Mary Jane Rotheram-Borus, Ph.D, recognized many connections between their work while touring the favelas of Brazil to study how families can raise healthy, resilient children, no matter what their circumstances. The UCLA Family Commons today has become a recognized project of the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.
The new wellness center will be committed to make the Westside of Los Angeles community a place where children and families thrive. The center will offer life coaching in relation to each family’s goals, healthy ways to approach life and parenting. Fitness classes will also help children and families tap into the creative roots of well-being.
Flannery discovered that lots of families would raise healthier children if access to reliable, science-based information about how to solve common problems would be more common. Then later both Flannery and Rotheram-Borus realized that the well-being of families was inextricably linked to the community in which they lived.
The Santa Monica Family Wellness Center has one goal: to travel the path of life-long wellness together with its community.
