YMCAs have led community-based health and well-being programs for more than a century.  Research continues to support the holistic approach to health that YMCAs have taken since 1891, when Luther Gulick proposed the red YMCA triangle as a symbol of a person's "essential unity -- spirit, mind and body.”  Participation in YMCA programs offer opportunities for friendship and community, a sense of well-being, self-confidence and improved mental abilities and cognition.