Celebrating our Wellcoaches' Community success at LM2025

Left to right, Simon Matthews, Susan Benigas, and Dean Ornish

Felicitations to the 2025 ACLM Fellows! A special hurrah to the Wellcoaches community members amongst them!: Qadira Ali, MD, MPH, DipABLM, FACLM, Deborah Chielli, MSN, APRN, AGNP-C, FACLM, Amy Comander, MD, DipABLM, FACLM, MSCP, Sarah-Ann Keyes, EdD, PA-C, DipACLM, FACLM, Simran Malhotra, MD, DipABLM, CHWC, FACLM, and Shanna Mello, EdD, MS, DipACLM, FACLM.

Congratulations to UNT Health Fort Worth, Debbie Gillespie, & Misti Zablosky!  Wellcoaches is proud to be their partner and provide the coaching component for their Master of Science in Lifestyle Health Sciences & Coaching degree program. At LM2025 they were awarded ACLM’s Special Recognition Award in the Graduate Category.  Presenting the award on behalf of the Awards Committee, Sami Bég said, “Drs. Zablosky and Gillespie showed remarkable vision in bringing lifestyle medicine into the academic setting with this first-of-its-kind program. Their leadership is playing a pivotal role in advancing lifestyle medicine as the future of healthcare and educating the next generation of professionals.”

Margaret Moore and Joe Sage

At his Candid Medical practice in Oregon, Wellcoach Joe Sage (Dr. Joe) provides individual coaching and lifestyle medicine.  He also uses his Wellcoach training and physician leadership training to help healthcare teams with workplace well-being.  At LM2025 he shared his wisdom regarding the latter in his LM2025 presentation, “Longevity and Legacy: How to Practice Medicine without Burnout.” Sage described how “work culture, work practices, and personal resilience interact as a framework for professional fulfillment.”

Conference attendees can access his presentation’s slides through the conference’s website.  (Other Wellcoaches who have also made their presentation slides available include Ziya Altug & Wendy Farnen-Price, Melissa Reznar, Simon Matthews, Kara Tibbe, and Michelle Crawford. Plus, you can see the slides for Margaret’s “Coaching is Healthcare: Next steps for Medical Practices.”)

You’ll be able to learn more about Dr. Joe on an upcoming Wellcoaches Inside podcast episode!

Rani Polak and Margaret Moore

Also at LM2025 were poster presentations by several Wellcoaches, and we have been given permission to share the posters with you.  Along with colleagues from Sheba Medical Center, our faculty person Rani Polak conducted a study on “Coaching for individuals with end stage lung disease” – both coaching to help prepare for lung transplantation, and coaching to help improve outcomes afterwards. Their 24-month RCT compared individuals who participated in a Health Coaching Telemedicine Program with a control group who was simply given lifestyle-related reading material.  

Wellcoach Sylvia K. Perry, DNP and Elizabeth Abraham, RN shared their poster presentation on a study they conducted about the impacts of a lifestyle medicine program – PAVING the Path to Wellness - on healthcare workers’ well-being.  The study looked at the program’s impact on two cohorts, one of clinical research staff and one of advanced practice providers.  PAVING the Path was originally developed by Wellcoach alum Beth Frates, MD and has been supported by Amy Comander, MD, Michelle Tollefson, MD, and Valeria Tivnan.  Beth originally developed PAVING to use with stroke survivors, Amy adapted it to use with breast cancer survivors, and Sylvia and Elizabeth adapted it to use in the workplace.