2010-2020 A Decade of Growth for Wellness Coaching
After years of building a foundation, health and wellness coaching has flourished in the last decade. At the beginning of this last decade the International Coach Federation was only fifteen years old and the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching hadn’t even been thought of yet. My book, Wellness Coaching for Lasting Lifestyle Change, had been on the market for only three years, and The Coaching Psychology Manual, for only one. Thousands of people were already trained and working as health and wellness coaches, but the numbers were nowhere near where they are today. Wellness coaching was being used by employee wellness programs, disease management and insurance companies but had not made its way into the clinical world much at all. There was considerable success where wellness coaching was being applied, but the research to back it up was lagging. As the decade moved along towards 2020, everything shifted. Health and wellness coaching has truly arrived!
In the last ten years we have seen the profession of health and wellness coaching grow both in its application and as a true profession with standards and credentialing. Early in 2010 the National Consortium for Credentialing Health & Wellness Coaches was formed to develop and establish those standards and a system of credentialing. After an untold number of hours of work by dedicated coaching professionals this evolved into the National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching that we have today. Now, in addition to certification that coaches can receive by the organization that trained them, they can apply to become certified through the NBHWC by qualifying for and passing an examination administered by the National Board of Medical Examiners. Prospective coaches can now choose to be trained by qualified organizations that have earned approval by the National Board, ensuring great quality for their educational experience.
Importantly the critical research evidence backing up the incredible effectiveness of health and wellness coaching has mushroomed. We now have hundreds and hundreds of solid peer-reviewed journal articles making the case for health and wellness coaching.
My observations over the past decade is that the growth of health and wellness coaching has particularly accelerated in three areas: universities, the international arena and clinical/lifestyle medicine. Let’s look at the role Real Balance Global Wellness has played in each.
Loma Linda University
Early in the decade only a handful of schools were offering programs that included health and wellness coaching. These were mostly schools of Integrative Health or related areas. Leaders such as The California Institute of Integral Studies, Duke University, and the University of Minnesota were such innovators. As more and more schools discovered that health and wellness coaching offered their students a practical skill set and a needed certification in the field, actual training in health and wellness coaching became highly desirable. Real Balance began to partner with schools of Public Health, Nursing, and a variety of programs to not only deliver direct training, but to train college and university faculty to become Real Balance Trainers and be able to deliver our curriculum and certification. Our program nurtures such schools along until they are ready to apply to the National Board to become an approved program in their own right.
China!
As lifestyle diseases have replaced infectious disease as the number one cause of premature death, the value of health and wellness coaching is being increasingly recognized around the world. Interest is growing fast in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Real Balance truly became Real Balance GLOBAL Wellness in this last decade. We developed training programs in Ireland/UK, Brazil, Australia, and China. We delivered keynotes and programs in the Azores Islands of Portugal, and the Philippines. Students from around the globe continue to become trained as health and wellness coaches through our live webinar classes.
The third area of growth for health and wellness coaching that has ballooned especially in the last few years of our past decade is primary care/lifestyle medicine. The recognition that a large component of our health is behavioral has led to the greater openness to the role of health and wellness coaching in direct medical services. Health and wellness coaches are helping patients to be more successful at medical compliance/adherence, and at accomplishing the directives of the lifestyle prescription recommended by their treatment team. The tremendous growth and increasing acceptance of the principles of lifestyle medicine has helped health and wellness coaches to be seen as a very practical solution for the behavioral changes sought by physicians and other healthcare practitioners. The recent granting of a Level Three CPT Code for health and wellness coaching is a huge step forward. Though direct reimbursement is a ways off, the new code helps legitimize health and wellness coaching in the eyes of the medical world and opens doors.
Health and wellness coaching enters this new decade with an earned respect. We have the evidence of our effectiveness, solid professional credentialing and standards, international awareness, and a recognition that we can play a key role in improving health and wellbeing all around the world. Be a part of helping us take it forward!
Mihcael and Deborah Arloski
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