Every month, we’re sharing the notable work that our director of advocacy and IIN graduate, Darrell Rogers, is doing in Washington, D.C., to increase the visibility and recognition of Health Coaches.

The year 2020 is shaping up to be our most innovative and powerful advocacy year ever. We’ve heard how you and your fellow Health Coaches want to participate in something bigger than yourselves to make a macro-level impact. This will be our work for the year ahead – to provide you with tools and opportunities and hold the space for you all to be the best advocates you can be for health and wellness in 2020.

As Health Coaches, we positively impact people’s lives every day – from getting clients to crowd out the foods that don’t nourish them to helping create new, meaningful, and healthy habits, behaviors, and traditions. As we look forward, we see the opportunity to grow the wellness economy locally, nationally, and globally. We will work together to establish more opportunities for you to provide the innovative and important services you do. Advocacy is a way that we can expand the collective wellness consciousness and create new markets that seek out your knowledge and services.

While politics can get messy, under it all, there are real people, elected by you, with their own wellness challenges, who are working hard to improve the health of their constituents. In countless meetings with members of Congress and their staff and policy leaders, they seek something innovative, yet commonsense and fulfilling. Our answer to them has been: Health Coaches!

And we’ve made real progress. Health Coaches now appear in four pieces of federal legislation, and we’re working to increase visibility and recognition of the great work you do every single day. We won’t stop until there’s a Health Coach available to all who want one.

As we think about our intentions for 2020, let’s aim high. Let’s connect with new audiences by inviting more into our space. We need to put ourselves in places that might be new, and perhaps a little uncomfortable, and show our confidence in our ability to gain new allies because we’re healthy, determined people looking to spread better wellness for all.

We know how valuable Health Coaches can be in the healthcare system to help bridge the gap between doctors and patients and provide the support and resources patients need to reach their health goals. IIN is committed to the success of every graduate making a difference in their communities, and this advocacy work aims to further support our graduates in all that they do.

Darrell Rogers began his career in Washington, D.C., twenty years ago and has worked for members of Congress and several notable nonprofit organizations and political campaigns. More recently, his work has been committed to protecting and promoting holistic healthcare access.