06 Mar I am a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach

Anybody can call themselves a health coach. I see it in MLM programs all the time. The person who sells the products is called a coach. Their training, if any, is how to sell the products.

That is very different from the kind of coach I am.

I passed a board exam to become a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach. The board exam is administered by the same people who administer board exams for doctors. To pass the exam, I had to know about health and how to coach. I have a scope of practice and ethics that I follow.

And I was in the first group of coaches to become board certified. I was also in the first group of coaches to study at the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy. And the coaching field is growing rapidly. It’s nice to be on the ground floor, but I’m learning about the business and science of coaching all the time.

Maybe soon there’ll be board certified coaches everywhere, and everyone who doesn’t feel great will sign up with a coach. And the ones who sign up will have confidence in the competence of their coach. That’s a future I’d like to see.

Here’s a letter about what it means to be board certified. I posted this shortly after I got my board exam results.

November 18, 2017

Hello everybody,

In September 2017, over 1,100 professional health & wellness coaches passed the first Health and Wellness Coach Certifying Examination (HWCCE) to earn the new credential: National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC). The certification examination is provided by the National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching (NBHWC), a collaboration between the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) and the International Consortium for Health & Wellness Coaching (ICHWC).

The profession of health & wellness coaching has emerged to address an urgent and widespread need – to increase individuals’ engagement in health-giving lifestyles that prevent and treat chronic conditions. While the profession has grown, so has variability in the standards of health & wellness coaches who are employed from clinical settings to universities, health plans to private practices and health clubs. To deliver consistent standards for the new profession, the ICHWC, a consortium of thought leaders and 52 health & wellness coach training and education programs, and the NBME, which develops and administers physician licensing examinations in the United States, joined forces to establish standards for health and wellness coach training and education programs and a coach certification exam.

The National Board Certification for Health & Wellness Coaching is based upon a set of competencies for appropriately developing the coaching relationship, communication techniques, processes for behavior change, health and wellness knowledge, ethics and professional development, and more. All practitioners who meet eligibility requirements and pass the examination are designated National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coaches (NBC-HWC). These practitioners are demonstrating a standard of practice that assists employers and members of the public in selecting a health & wellness coach.

The over 1,100 practitioners who earned the NBC-HWC credential will be listed in an online public directory by January 1, 2018 at www.ichwc.org.

If you have questions, visit the ICHWC website at http://www.ichwc.org or NBME at http://www.nbme.org/hwc/, or contact ICHWC Executive Director Leigh-Ann Webster at (858) 395-5808.

We are tremendously excited to be involved in setting the national standards for competence in our developing profession, and making it easier for people across the country to access the skilled support they need to reach their health and wellness goals.

Best,

Agata Butler, PhD
National Board of Medical Examiners, National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching

Craig N. Mills, Ed.D
National Board of Medical Examiners, National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching

Margaret Moore, MBA
Wellcoaches Corporation; Institute of Coaching, Mclean Hospital, A Harvard Medical School affiliate, National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching

Cindy Schultz, MA, LP
University of Minnesota Center for Spirituality and Healing, National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching

Ruth Q. Wolever, PhD
Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt School of Nursing, National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching