What We Do
Founded in the United States in 2002, Wellcoaches was the first coaching school for health and wellness professionals. Wellcoaches continues to define the cutting edge and the gold standard for high impact, evidence-based, and innovative education, training, and certification.
Wellcoaches International
Health and wellness coaches are expert facilitators of mindset and behaviour change that generates sustainable healthy lifestyles, which prevent and treat disease, restore health and foster well-being and thriving.
We are making a dent in some of the toughest challenges of our times: the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, sedentary lifestyles, poor nutrition, chronic stress, distracted minds, and ever-rising healthcare costs. Seventy-five percent of healthcare costs are related to preventable diseases: more than ever before, we need well-educated, skilled coaches.
The Challenge of Healthcare
Chronic disease is the leading cause of death, illness and disability in Australia. In 2014/15, 50% of Australians had at least one prominent chronic disease. At the same time, just on a quarter of all Australians had two or more chronic diseases and 60% of people over the age of 65 had two or more chronic diseases1. In 2011, around three quarters of the non-fatal burden of disease arose from chronic conditions2.
Our current and historical approaches to healthcare are not stemming this tide. The key feature of most chronic disease is lifestyle, not a pathogen. Simply knowing what constitutes a healthy diet or adequate exercise, is not sufficient. The prevention, treatment and reversal of chronic disease therefore requires evidence based supported behavioural change and this has not been the mainstay of health and medical care.
To combat escalating chronic disease, we must have health and medical practitioners and fitness providers equipped with skills to engage patients in making sustained health behaviour change. The evidence based practice of health coaching, when combined with the principles of lifestyle medicine, is one significant contribution to this challenge.
What Is Health Coaching?
Health coaching is the evidence based application of questioning, conversational and goal setting skills to support others to make sustainable health behaviour change consistent with their own values and personal strengths. It seeks to empower patients to locate their own unique motivating forces to respond to the health challenges specific to them. Health coaching approaches can be taught and integrated into routine medical and health consultations and provide both patients and health care providers with skills to identify and secure lasting behavioural change and to respond effectively to uncertainty and ambivalence about change.
In short, health coaches are expert facilitators of mindset and behaviour change that generates sustainable healthy lifestyles to prevent and treat disease, restore health and foster well-being and thriving.
Over the course of a few consultations, a patient will first identify an overall health and lifestyle vision. The health coach uses his or her skills to support the patient to connect this vision with their own values and strengths and to ensure that the goals they set are consistent with their vision.
Evidence & Applications
There is already a broad evidence base for health coaching. More research is available here, showing the successful application of health coaching in diabetes, obesity, smoking cessation, hypertension and dietary behaviour change.
All primary care providers – whether they be GPs, Pharmacists, allied health or community health practitioners, and indeed anybody who works professionally to support physical and mental fitness, are ideally placed to learn the skills of evidence based health coaching and work with patients as early as possible to support lasting health behaviour change.
“Wellcoaches is making a dent in some of the toughest challenges of our times”
Wellcoaches Australia
Wellcoaches was the first coaching school for health and wellness professionals, founded in the USA in 2002. Working in collaboration with the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, Wellcoaches is a first-mover in establishing coaching science. Wellcoaches Australia and Wellcoaches New Zealand were born in 2019. As a natural fit with the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine, Wellcoaches Australia and New Zealand continue to provide the same gold standard for high impact, evidence-based and innovative education, training and certification.
Wellcoaches is making a dent in some of the toughest challenges of our times: the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, sedentary lifestyles, poor nutrition, chronic stress, distracted minds, and ever-rising healthcare costs.
Wellcoaches created the first coaching textbook in healthcare, the Coaching Psychology Manual, endorsed by the ACSM, which is used widely in the health and wellness coach training industry. The coaching protocols published in this text are evidence-based.
Wellcoaches around the world aims to set and keep the standard of evidence based, high quality training and is a leading provider of successful candidates for accreditation by the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching and the International Coach Federation.
The Wellcoaches family shares a passion and vision for health and wellness coaches as catalysts for transformational change.
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