Jan­ice Lear­mond Criqui

Jan­u­ary 12�18 has re­ceived US Con­gres­sion­al recog­ni­tion as Na­tion­al Health Coach Week fi­nal­ly!

In a let­ter shared with In­te­gra­tive Nu­tri­tion, US rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tim Ryan con­grat­u­lat­ed health coach­es on the im­por­tance of their work:

"The Unit­ed States faces a health cri­sis due in large part to the preva­lence of cost­ly chron­ic con­di­tions, which are large­ly brought on by poor lifestyle choic­es... It is vi­tal that Health and Well­ness Coach­es con­tin­ue to ex­pand their good work, the na­tion needs it...I want to con­grat­u­late the progress made by Health and Well­ness Coach­es and wish them the best dur­ing Na­tion­al Health and Well­ness Coach Week."

Obe­si­ty, Type 2 di­a­betes, heart dis­ease, and oth­er pre­ventable ill­ness­es are at the heart of the cur­rent health cri­sis, and health coach­es are poised to make a re­al dif­fer­ence. The cur­rent health­care par­a­digm de­pends on in­va­sive surg­eries and med­ica­tions to man­age symp­toms rather than iden­ti­fy­ing and pre­vent­ing the root cause of ill­ness. Food, ex­er­cise, sleep, stress man­age­ment–these day-to-day choic­es are vi­tal­ly im­por­tant, but they are all too of­ten over­looked by health­care providers.

Over the past 23 years, In­te­gra­tive Nu­tri­tion has paved the way for a new ap­proach.

An in­creas­ing num­ber of stud­ies are show­ing that health coach­ing im­proves out­comes and is high­ly ef­fec­tive in im­prov­ing peo­ple's health. One such study is high­light­ed in the Cana­di­an Jour­nal of Di­a­betes–Health Coach­ing in Di­a­betes: Em­pow­er­ing Pa­tients to Self-Man­age. The Health Coun­cil of Cana­da pro­motes self-man­age­ment sup­port which they de­fine as the "sys­tem­at­ic pro­vi­sion of ed­u­ca­tion and sup­port­ive in­ter­ven­tions, by health­care staff (and oth­ers) to in­crease the pa­tients' skills and con?dence in man­ag­ing their health prob­lems, in­clud­ing reg­u­lar as­sess­ment of progress and prob­lems, goal set­ting and prob­lem-solv­ing sup­port."

There­fore, health coach­es are con­sid­ered as pro­fes­sion­als, trained to en­gage in in­ter­ac­tions that are fo­cused on the pa­tient's con­cerns and in which the pa­tient is lis­tened to and helped to work through their is­sues. In di­a­betes, the role of the health coach is to col­lab­o­rate with the pa­tient to in­form and sup­port him/her in mak­ing the best pos­si­ble di­a­betes self-man­age­ment de­ci­sions and to fa­cil­i­tate pa­tient ad­her­ence and to fol­low up on the pa­tients' choic­es.

The "core com­pe­ten­cies" ex­hib­it­ed by health­care pro­fes­sion­als to coach self-man­age­ment and health be­hav­iour change are as fol­lows:

1. Use re?ec­tive lis­ten­ing;

2. As­sess and match in­ter­ven­tion to per­son's "readi­ness" to change;

3. Use de­ci­sion­al bal­ance to in­crease (if nec­es­sary) a per­son's readi­ness to change;

4. As­sist the per­son to de­vel­op a SMART (speci?c, mea­sur­able, achiev­able, re­al­is­tic and time-ori­ent­ed) goal and ac­tion plan; and

5. As­sist the per­son to iden­ti­fy bar­ri­ers, use prob­lem solv­ing and de­vel­op strate­gies for suc­cess.

The in­creas­ing bur­den of chron­ic dis­ease on the health sys­tem can no longer be ig­nored. An es­sen­tial com­po­nent to man­ag­ing chron­ic dis­ease is pa­tient self-man­age­ment, in­clud­ing ad­her­ence to treat­ment rec­om­men­da­tions and healthy lifestyle be­hav­iours. To en­gage and sup­port pa­tients to ef­fec­tive­ly self-man­age, health­care pro­fes­sion­als need to pro­vide per­son­al coach­ing as well as ed­u­ca­tion. And health sys­tems need to en­sure co-or­di­na­tion along the con­tin­u­um of care in­te­grat­ing com­mu­ni­ty-based, pri­ma­ry and spe­cial­ist care.

More in­sti­tu­tions are now recog­nis­ing the im­por­tance of health coach­ing, and it is so ex­cit­ing to now see the In­te­gra­tive Nu­tri­tion com­mu­ni­ty val­ued by an in­flu­en­tial mem­ber of Con­gress.

With this news, health coach­es like my­self, are one step clos­er to our mis­sion: to im­prove health and hap­pi­ness and through that process, cre­ate a rip­ple ef­fect that trans­forms the world.

Any­one in­ter­est­ed in learn­ing about healthy liv­ing can vis­it: bit.ly/1DIGspp Al­so, sign up to get a com­pli­men­ta­ry nu­tri­tion eBook ex­cerpt, healthy liv­ing tools and more.