New Patient Centered Approach to Unlock the Individual`s Potential to Adopt Healthy Lifestyles: Health Coaching

Abstract

Health Coaching (HC), a patient-empowerment focused approach, is guided and supported by the medical professional, to facilitate patient to explore, unlock and activate his/her self-potential to adopt healthy lifestyles. HC, a whole person and also a population-based approach, can be defined as a system-wide innovation aiming positive social change. A NHS review showed that there is promising evidence about HC, particularly for supporting behaviour change. HC in our international intervention project, to our knowledge, is used for the first time as a holistic health promotion approach for oral health and diabetes type 2 (T2DM) management; in line with IDF-FDI (2007) declaration stating that oral health promotion should be part of diabetes management. The aim of the present study is to assess the effectiveness of HC on oral health and T2DM management by use of clinical (HbA1c, periodontal health) and subjective measures (satisfaction with access to health care, frequency of physical activity, toothbrushing and dental visit) among T2DM patients. Our study`s preliminary results show that at post-intervention there was a significant reduction at HbA1c (Turkey:0.7%, Denmark:0.4%, p=0.001) in HC groups. The figures for HE groups were non-significant. Daily toothbrushing was correlated with change at HbA1c and regular physical activity in HC groups. Person-centered approach focusing on multidisciplinary collaboration is essential to improve the whole well-being of individual in daily life, and thereby the society, in line with WHO 2014 Geneva Declaration. HC, a promising new approach, can speak as one of the key implementations/approaches at health care-settings to meet this essentiality.