An Underused Route Into the Coaching Workforce: Undergraduate, NBHWC-Approved Preparation

Lifestyle medicine depends on helping people change daily behavior and sustain it, and health and wellness coaching is one of the most reliable ways to support that change. Demand for board-certified coaches is rising faster than supply. Most preparation sits at the graduate level, in continuing education, and in private certificate programs. Undergraduate education remains the route the field has used least. This essay argues that placing coach preparation approved by the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching inside a bachelor’s degree can sit alongside established paths, reach students earlier, and widen a constrained pipeline. Drawing on the development of one such program in a fully online setting, the essay describes why undergraduate preparation matters for access, community impact, and professional identity formation; what approval standards ask in instructional hours, live coaching practice, and faculty credentialing; and how those standards were translated into an online course structure built around synchronous practice, deliberate sequencing, and instructor presence. Lessons for other programs address faculty recruitment, documentation, sequencing, and credential language. No students have yet reached the coaching sequence, so this is an account of design rather than outcomes.