The Academic Integrative Medicine (AIM) Health & Wellness Coaching (HWC) Certification Program graduated its third and fourth cohorts with students from across healthcare disciplines, showcasing The Samueli Institute mission to incorporate integrative health throughout the healthcare system and other disciplines. The program has graduated health and wellness coaches from areas such as nursing, pharmacy, athletics, obstetrics and gynecology, nutrition, and more.
AIM HWC is a six-month program that combines traditional and whole-person care training to prepare health coaches to work with people in various healthcare settings. Students are trained to provide integrative health coaching to clients with a variety of clinical conditions and prevention goals, and the program offers a focus of supporting those with mental health challenges that impact their wellness.
“This Health & Wellness Coaching program showed up at a perfect time of my personal growth and the stage of my professional development,” said Hui Hwang, LAc, DAOM, Dipl. OM, acupuncturist at the Samueli Institute.
“I can only imagine how tremendously beneficial it will be to my patients once I start to integrate deep listening with empathy, appreciative inquiry with curiosity and many more applications to my daily practice. I can’t wait to apply these skills in my interactions with my patients and see how it manifests and transforms my patients’ lives and to sustain a change for good.”
Additionally, organizations continued to partner with the Samueli Institute in order to increase access to coaching education and services. In 2023, the AIM-HWC program was supported by a grant from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, facilitated by Robert McCarron, DO, director of education at the Samueli Institute. And in 2024, the Samueli Institute gave scholarships to five students – four from Be Well Orange County and one from Mental Health Association of Orange County – to help train people working with mental health in Orange County.
“The skills that I have learned throughout this program that I have found most helpful in my current work at [MHAOC] have been the four pillars of coaching: self-awareness, authentic communication, mindful presence and providing a safe & sacred space. Keeping these things in mind as I do my job as a peer support specialist in a mental health setting has made me a better listener and better able to provide support to those living with mental illness,” said graduate Claudia Lavini, who received a scholarship and planned to sit for National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching board certification.
“Thank you again for the opportunity to learn these very valuable skills in health coaching that have certainly enhanced how I view healthcare and have motivated me to seek new ways to support clients that I currently work… and also to make healthier changes in my own life.”
The AIM HWC program also partnered with the John Henry Foundation, a non-profit that provides long-term residential care for adults living with schizophrenia in Orange County, to provide free coaching to family members of those living in the community. And through a partnership with the Illumination Foundation, a non-profit that provides services to adults and children experiencing homelessness, the program provides health education and coaching to clients in both English and Spanish.
