The Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine is thrilled to announce a strategic partnership with Wellcoaches® Australia and Wellcoaches® New Zealand.

Wellcoaches® founded the first coaching school for health and wellness professionals in the USA in 2000, in collaboration with the American College of Lifestyle Medicine and the American College of Sports Medicine, and was instrumental in establishing the discipline of coaching science.

Since then, Wellcoaches® has continued to provide the gold standard for high impact, evidence-based, and innovative education, training, and certification. More than 12,000 coaches in over 50 countries have been trained and Wellcoaches® trains 1,200 coaches per year.

ASLM Fellow and Diplomate of the IBLM, Simon Matthews, has established an Australian and New Zealand base for Wellcoaches®, fully endorsed and supported by Wellcoaches® in the USA. He says, “With most of the developed world facing an epidemic of lifestyle-related disease like obesity, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and a number of cancers, the time is here for trained and skilled practitioners of health behaviour change to engage people in ways that will lead them to make sustained behavior and lifestyle changes.”

“Health coaching is solidly based in science and evidence and is the ‘tie that binds’ the pillars of lifestyle medicine. When viewed as the practical application of the principles of lifestyle medicine, health coaching is a formidable tool for improving the health of the nation”, Simon Matthews says.

Wellcoaches® aims to train health professionals from all disciplines to become expert facilitators of mindset and behaviour change that generates sustainable healthy lifestyles, which prevent and manage disease, and foster well-being and thriving.

Stephen Penman, Executive Director of ASLM says, “This is another pivotal moment for the development of Lifestyle Medicine in Australia and New Zealand.  We’re delighted to announce this partnership, especially knowing the difference that accessible and practical training in health coaching will make to practitioners. It’s not that ‘patients don’t want to change’, it’s that practitioners often don’t have the training or the resources to intervene in ways that can actually make a difference.”