Direct and Mediated Relationships Between Participation in a Telephonic Health Coaching Program and Health Behavior, Life Satisfaction, and Optimism
Published in Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
Authors: Sears LE, Coberley CR, Pope JE
Objective: To study the direct and mediated effects of a telephonic health coaching program on changes to healthy behaviors, life satisfaction, and optimism.
Methods: This longitudinal correlational study of 4,881 individuals investigated simple and mediated relationships between participation in a telephonic health risk coaching program and outcomes from three annual Well-being Assessments.
Results: Program participation was directly related to improvements in healthy behaviors, life satisfaction and optimism, and indirect effects of coaching on these variables concurrently and over a one-year time lag were also supported.
Conclusions: Given previous research that improvements to life satisfaction, optimism and health behaviors are valuable for individuals, employers and communities, a clearer understanding of intervention approaches that may impact these outcomes simultaneously can drive greater program effectiveness and value on investment.
Key Takeaways:
- This paper provides a better understanding of the multiple mechanisms that are underlying the effects of a telephonic health coaching program and informs improvements that could increase the value of such programs.
- When participants are more engaged in telephonic health coaching, health behaviors, life satisfaction and optimism are more likely to improve compared to those who did not engage.
- Program-related improvements to health behavior explain subsequent improvements to global perceptions of well-being (life satisfaction and optimism) one year later.
- While also significant but slightly weaker, program-related improvements to these life perceptions explained a portion of the improvements observed in health behavior.