Realizing the Promise of Health Coaching

The World Health Organization estimates that 80% of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes—and 40% of cancer—could be avoided through healthy diet, regular physical activity and avoidance of tobacco use.1 Better treatment adherence, lifestyle management, and self-care could also prevent both disability, and costly disease-related complications and hospitalizations among patients with chronic conditions. Poor medication adherence alone costs an estimated $290 billion in the United States each year.2 Fortunately, the behavioral sciences offer some practical, effective—but poorly utilized—ways to address these issues.

Moving to an Evidence-Based Health Coaching Practice

Various health coaching approaches are being used in employer, primary care, community, health plan and population health improvement settings to support individual lifestyle change, treatment adherence, and self-care. Yet while health coaching is a frequently used term, it is often a poorly defined, informal practice. Some clinicians refer to any patient education or advice-giving encounter as “health coaching.” And many non-clinician and clinician health coaches use a variety of life coaching approaches that are based more on popular psychology than behavioral science research. These facts raise a number of questions: What is coaching? Can coaching approaches from the business and sports worlds be applied by clinicians in health care settings? Which health coaching approaches are most effective? How can health coaching be patient-centered and deliver best value to patients and health care payers and purchasers?