Health coaches: Their time has come

ASHEBORO — They’re coaches who don’t tell you what to do. Instead, they help you figure things out for yourself.

Dr. Beth Knott, Daffie Garris and Rae Ritter, together known as KGR, are nationally certified health and wellness coaches. They’ve formed a company they call KGR Health & Wellness Academy and are teaching health coaching online from a garage/studio in Asheboro. 

They have since added a graduate from their first class, Stephanie Cuthbertson of Denver, Colorado, as they see their business expanding.

“Health coaching is an emerging field on the verge of taking off,” Knott said. “It’s value-based care. A health coach does not tell you what to do.” Instead, the goal is to be a partner with the client in health behavior.

The idea, Knott explained, is to help a client navigate lifestyle change. “It’s an innovative approach (that looks at) the entire spectrum of health,” whether it’s a person’s sleep habits, environment, finances, time management or other facets of life. They’re all tied in with the person’s well-being.

“Every person is his or her best expert,” Knott said. “We take them as an individual, not as a medical group. (Navigating health) is different with everyone.”

“We can do a group session but it looks different,” Garris said. “Health coaching honors autonomy, the optimal health for each person.”

To put health coaching into a real-life perspective, imagine someone being told by their doctor that they need to lose weight. The patient leaves the medical office but has no idea how to do weight loss. 

That’s where the health coach comes in, helping the patient to look at their circumstances, asking questions, looking for solutions. “We try to help them find what they’ve not yet discovered,” Cuthbertson said.

“We’re not educators,” Knott said. “We don’t tell them what to do, just provide a guiding process. We ask questions and allow you to appreciate the tools you have. We’re evoking your abilities.”

“We do a lot of listening,” Garris added. “A good health coach reflects back to them what they say.”

In other words, as Knott said, “We figure out the how, not the what. How to implement change but let them discover it. We’re asking questions in a different way, to let them find the answers.”

Knott and Garris sat in front of a green screen talking to 10 students on Zoom along with Ritter and Cuthbertson. At the controls was Tim Garris, pushing buttons, checking sounds and visuals, starting a video for the students to view. The green screen behind Knott and Garris displayed the KGR logo to those watching on Zoom.

Since the class is online, students can take the 16-week course from anywhere in the world that has internet access. During this session, Knott explained the difference between sympathy and empathy. Simply put, sympathy acknowledges feelings while empathy shares feelings. Knott said a health coach must empathize with a client.

Garris, retired as vice president of administrative services at Randolph Community College, said she decided to take the school’s new course in health and wellness coaching. “I fell in love with what health coaches do,” she said. 

Then she met Knott and Ritter and “we decided to go into business. I keep the finances and they’re the content experts. We share the load. Stephanie was in our first class of graduates.”

An audiologist, Knott took the RCC course and began practicing health coaching part-time. Now she’s shifted to a full-time health coach.

She credits Sam Varner, the Randolph County wellness coordinator, as “the reason we’re doing this. He’s implemented health coaching with Randolph County employees. He inspired us to do what we do.”

Knott said she was teaching health coaching at RCC with Varner when Ritter was learning the skills. Along with Garris, KGR was formed because “we wanted to make it accessible to everyone.” 

The question they asked was how to do Zoom better. The Garris garage/studio was the answer.

“Daffie is married to an amazing man who can do all the technology,” Knott said.

Tim Garris said after he moves their vehicles out of the garage, he can set up the studio in about 30 minutes. Later, another 30 minutes and the building is a garage again.

Ritter said she was working in research at UNC-Chapel Hill when she “retired to do this work.”

When she was diagnosed with cancer, she wanted “something to help improve my health. I took the class online.”

At some point, Ritter came to Asheboro and met with Knott. “She asked me to be an instructor. People with different strengths make up a successful company.”

Cuthbertson said she “loves the classroom experience. I’d never taken a class online before. I felt I was in the classroom and I felt close to the others,” even from as far away as Denver.

The health coaching curriculum is rigorous, Knott said. “You must be passionate and put in the work. It takes about a year.”

The KGR program is nationally approved and even goes beyond what is recommended. To graduate, students must be present at most all the 16 Zoom sessions, which last about four hours once a week. Then they must pass a national exam and be interviewed by the national board.

Cuthbertson said she spent an average of nine hours per week during her studies.

Garris said, “We’re set apart from other national programs. Our students coach each other and are on video with outside clients.” While the national standards require three coaching sessions, KGR students have 17 sessions.

That helps students have “confidence to coach, feel comfortable in the field,” Knott said. “Until you coach, you don’t have any idea until you’re actually doing it.”

KGR must be doing it right because, as Garris said, their student pass rate is 100 percent.

“We are going to go,” Garris said. “We’re in the process of working and partnering with companies. That’s why we brought Stephanie on, to someday have her own class.”

“I was an undergraduate at Columbia (University) majoring in pre-med,” Cuthbertson said. “I really wanted to coach women with eating disorders. I found the course, doors opened up and now I work with people will all kinds of disorders.”

Knott insisted that the role of physicians is critical in setting a patient’s goal. “Then when a patient leaves the doctor’s office, that’s when the health coach comes in — how to make the change. Evidence shows the impact of the effectiveness.

“When you see them change, it’s rewarding,” she said. “It’s fun. Health coaches are going to change the world.”