Choices: Cultivating Wellness Equity For People And The Planet
Welcome to the Choices chapter of our Survivor’s Guide. Here, we explore how wellness equity can transform the way we address burnout - both personally and on a planetary scale. Often, discussions about lifestyle emphasize individual choices, such as dietary changes or exercise routines. While important, these approaches can overlook the systemic barriers many people face, including the legacy of colonialism, racism, and economic exploitation. By centering equity, we acknowledge that not all communities have the same access to safe housing, nutritious foods, or supportive healthcare services.
This guide draws on three key resources:
The GAIA Study by JIVINITI Research Program, which uncovered key insights on the inequity in our diets, especially as highlighted during the global pandemic
The ACLM HEAL Initiative (Health Equity Achieved via Lifestyle Medicine), which seeks to dismantle barriers in healthcare and promote accessible, evidence-based lifestyle interventions.
Decolonial and environmental justice scholarship, which critiques mainstream ecological and health narratives for erasing the long histories of exploitation and suffering endured by Black, Indigenous, and other racialized communities.
Combining these perspectives, we can make Choices that foster personal well-being while advocating for systemic changes to uplift the communities and ecosystems most impacted by exploitation.
Personal Choices: Wellness Equity In Everyday Life
Why It Matters
Lifestyle wellness choices are often framed as a universally available solution. However, factors such as food deserts, high-stress working conditions, and inadequate healthcare access can limit the feasibility of many recommended changes - especially for those in marginalized or low-income communities. The American College of Lifestyle Medicine’s HEAL Initiative works to close these gaps by advocating for policies and community programs that make health-promoting resources available to everyone.
Meanwhile, decolonial scholars remind us that entire groups have faced chronic stress, forced labor, and environmental devastation for centuries. From farmworkers in California’s Central Valley to women workers in India’s cashew industry to the IPCC’s support to Indigenous communities fighting for land rights as a means to combating climate change, personal “health choices” cannot be divorced from the systemic injustices that shape daily life.
Survivor’s Guide Check-list
Map Your Context
Identify the social and environmental factors affecting your health - access to clean water, fresh produce, or green spaces. Recognizing these constraints - or positional privileges - is a crucial first step toward equitable solutions.Reframe “Healthy Eating”
When possible, choose culturally relevant, plant-forward meals that are locally grown. If affordable options or grocery stores are scarce, push for community gardens, farmers’ markets, or mobile produce vans in your area.Seek Collective Wellness Support
Look for local coalitions, community health workers, or mutual aid networks that center on collective well-being rather than individualistic approaches. Such groups often share resources and tackle structural issues like food insecurity.Honor Rest and Recovery as Rights
Chronic stress leads to burnout, especially when juggling multiple jobs or caregiving roles. Advocate in your workplace or community for fair wages, breaks, and mental health support, recognizing that rest is a human right, not a luxury.Engage in Healthcare Policy Advocacy
Support legislation or local measures that expand healthcare access, fund preventive medicine, and uphold patients’ rights—particularly for historically marginalized groups.
Featured Resources
Podcast 1: Third Degree Burnout – A Survivor’s Guide: Personal Wellness And Equity
Listen in as we discuss how personal choices intersect with systemic barriers:
Stories from community organizers who have championed farmers’ markets and co-ops in food deserts.
Insights from practitioners using the ACLM HEAL framework to offer inclusive, culturally sensitive healthcare.
Practical tips on mobilizing neighbors and local officials to address inequities that keep healthy lifestyles out of reach for many.
Explore our Self Reflection Tool #showyourburnoutstripes to see how your personal well-being overlaps with broader social and economic forces.
Planetary Choices: Decolonizing Our Relationship With The Earth
Why It Matters
Popular narratives about environmental decline often center on the Anthropocene, linking global issues to human industrial activity. Decolonial scholars—like Malcom Ferdinand and Kyle Whyte—point out that this framework glosses over centuries of exploitation imposed by colonialism and capitalism, particularly on Black and Indigenous peoples. Alternative terms like Plantationocene and Kleptocene highlight how plantation economies and land theft are foundational to environmental degradation, forced labor, and systemic violence. Recognizing these deeper roots helps us see that “planetary burnout” isn’t just a side effect of modern industry but a continuing legacy of injustice.
Survivor’s Guide Check-list
Center Frontline Communities
Support and learn from grassroots activists who have long resisted colonial and extractive practices—Indigenous water protectors, land-back movements, and worker cooperatives in agriculture.Reimagine Food Systems
Shift the focus from individual dietary “green” choices to dismantling exploitative labor practices. Advocate for fair wages, safe working conditions, and ecological stewardship across the food production chain.Participate in Reparative Ecological Actions
From restoring wetlands to reforesting abandoned plantations, look for projects that both heal ecosystems and honor the rights of local communities historically harmed by extraction and dispossession.Prioritize Policy Over Consumer Choices Alone
While consumer habits matter, real change requires legislative reforms—like regulating carbon emissions, enforcing corporate accountability, and funding regenerative land projects led by communities of color.Amplify Decolonial Narratives
Share and support research, art, and storytelling that highlight how environmental crises are entwined with historical injustices. When we challenge one, we must challenge the other.
Featured Resources
Podcast 2: Third Degree Burnout – A Survivor’s Guide: Planetary Wellness And Equity
In this episode, we spotlight decolonial and environmental justice efforts reshaping planetary choices:
Discussions with scholars critiquing the Anthropocene narrative and framing alternative futures like the Plantationocene or Kleptocene.
Success stories from communities reclaiming land, fighting exploitative industries, and revitalizing ancestral agricultural practices.
Action steps for policy advocacy, reparative justice, and global solidarity.
Use our Self Reflection Tool #showyourburnoutstripes to visualize the broader systems underlying planetary burnout—and how collective action can begin to heal these rifts.
Choices In Action: Toward A More Just And Sustainable World
By centering wellness equity, we recognize that personal well-being hinges on dismantling systemic barriers—and that planetary health requires addressing the historical and ongoing exploitation of people and lands. When we move beyond individualistic narratives and embrace decolonial frameworks, our Choices become levers for broader transformation.
Before you proceed to the next Survivor’s Guide chapter, consider:
Who in my community lacks access to “healthy choices,” and how can I help close that gap?
How can I challenge or change exploitative labor conditions in my local food systems?
What decolonial or environmental justice movements resonate with me, and how can I support them?
Equitable wellness isn’t just about personal lifestyle adjustments - it’s about collective liberation, reparative ecology, and a future where all can thrive.
