What is health coaching?

Our Health coaches in Perth and Australia wide specialize in behaviour change. They support their clients in finding their own strategies and motivation for change, overcoming obstacles, and implementing protocols that have either been prescribed by a clinician or nutritionist/dietitian or that the client has chosen to implement on their own.

Health coaches don’t operate on the “expert model” that’s so common in healthcare. They don’t lecture, prescribe, or simply dispense advice. Instead, they empower others to make the choice for health, including healthier behaviours, for themselves.

How can health coaches help?

The chronic disease epidemic is spreading. 1 in 2 adults in Australia have a chronic disease, and 3 in 5 Australian’s over 65 have more than 1 condition. Around 9 out of 10 deaths are associated with chronic disease. The majority of those chronic illnesses are caused by diet, lifestyle, and behavior—not genetics. Changing those lifestyle factors has the potential to prevent and reverse chronic disease on a large scale. With chronic illness, most care is self-care.

Even so, research shows us that change is difficult. There’s a lot of room for improvement, but that’s where our health coaches in Perth come in. Health coaches work directly with their clients to support to them as they embrace those healthy lifestyle strategies.

If a practitioner prescribes a treatment protocol for a patient, health coaches can, through their support, improve the patient’s adherence to the treatment plan and goals.

That’s not the only benefit health coaches bring clients. They act as a liaison between the clinician and the patient, often improving the doctor-patient relationship in the process and assisting the patient achieve their goals.

How effective is health coaching?

In short, it’s extremely effective. Our Health Coaches in Perth and Australia wide have been shown to:

Improve weight loss and help people maintain a lower weight for longer
Lead to faster reduction of blood sugar levels in diabetic patients
Lower total cholesterol levels in people with coronary heart disease
Lessen feelings of depression and improve overall quality of life
Encourage people to stick with the changes they’ve made long term

How are health coaches trained?

Health coaching is a relatively new profession, and the practice continues to grow and mature. Because of that, there’s a wide variety in the quality and depth of the available health coach training programs out there. But all that’s changing.

Through a partnership with the National Board of Medical Examiners, ICHWC (the International Consortium for Health & Wellness Coaching) has developed rigorous standards for health coach education and training. Health coaches who have mastered a specific set of practical skills, logged at least 50 practice coaching sessions with clients, and passed a certifying exam can earn the NBC-HWC (National Board Certified-Health and Wellness Coach) certification.

The best-trained health coaches out there will be NBC-HWC certified or have attended schools that meet or exceed ICHWC standards, such as the ADAPT Health Coach Training Program.

What is the scope of practice of a health coach?

The role of a health coach is centered on supporting his or her clients’ efforts to grow and change. The health coach’s main focus is on helping others reach their self-developed health goals.

Health coaches:

Help clients develop their own health goals and action steps based on treatment plans from practitioners
Encourage clients to mobilize their own insight, internal strengths, and external resources to make sustainable, healthy changes
Work with individuals or groups to facilitate the behavior change process
Act as accountability partners to help clients reach their health goals

Health coaches do not diagnose conditions, prescribe treatments, or provide psychological therapeutic interventions.

How do health coaches and Practitioners collaborate to improve patient outcomes?

Alongside their work supporting clients, health coaches excel at supporting practitioners too. While doctors and functional medicine health practitioners focus on diagnosing, testing, and establishing treatment protocols, health coaches work to help people implement the behaviour changes that clinicians prescribe. That’s why health coaches are an essential part of the collaborative practice model of healthcare.

In collaborative healthcare, practitioners work with health coaches, nutritionists, and other allied providers to provide patients all of the support they need to make lasting changes. That leads to better patient outcomes and improved health.

What is a Health Coach and How Can They Help You?

“It’s going to be my New Year’s Resolution” - we’re all familiar with that saying. You decide that you want to be healthier—exercise more, eat better, lose weight, feel less stressed or get a health problem under control. You set your goal, such as walking 30 minutes every day—and for a while you manage to stick with your new habit. But before you know it, you’ve reverted to your old ways.

Just deciding that you want to be healthier doesn’t work—if it did, we’d all be healthier! That’s where a health coach comes in. The science behind health coaching shows that connecting you with your deepest inner wants, needs and values, can provide motivation that can compel you to make and sustain a lifestyle change.

A health coach is trained to ask open-ended questions, connect you with your strengths and provide a non-judgemental, safe space to explore your ‘ideal’ self. They help you set goals, evoke deeper thought, devise accountability protocols and celebrate wins. They are trained in models of behaviour change, meeting the client exactly where they are at. A health coach is your partner, not an expert telling you what to do.

Studies show that working with a health coach can help individuals achieve and maintain an impressive array of better-health benefits—including fewer hospitalisations and better adherence to a medication regimen. In cancer patients, health coaching has been proven to have particularly strong psychological benefits.

Even for people without life- threatening illnesses, a health coach can help make lasting changes. Health coaches work with people who would like to better manage their stress, improve their eating habits, increase their cardio fitness, improve their sleep, reduce the time they spend sitting and more. In addition, health coaches help clients find creative solutions for situations in their lives that are impacting their well-being.

Advanced Functional Medicine now offers health coaching. Emma Judges, A-CFHC, Health Coach Perth, has trained through the Kresser Institute in Functional Medicine Health Coaching. Telehealth appointments are now available.