Jeremy Knipper (00:01.653)

Welcome to Navigate's People's First Podcast. Thank you for joining us. Today we're doing something a little bit different, a leadership roundtable focused on one big question. Where is health coaching in 2026 and where is it headed?

Jeremy Knipper (00:20.693)

The wellbeing space is evolving quickly and organizations are facing growing pressure to cut through vendor noise to prove results and create strategies that drive behavior change.

In today's conversation, we're digging into the biggest shifts happening in the coaching landscape, as well as where organizations should be investing and how leading employers are trying coaching to measure, to deliver measurable business outcomes.

To help unpack all of this, I'm joined by a panel of experts from across Navigate who are helping employers rethink what effective coaching looks like in the years ahead. I'm Jeremy Knipper, CTO here at Navigate, and I'll start by introducing Dr. Jennifer Musick, Vice President of Health Solutions, Mikki Walters, our Director of Health Solutions Services, and Jenn Lowry, Vice President of Product Strategy.

Dr. Jen, would you mind giving us a quick bit of your background?

Jennifer Musick (01:49.193)

Sure. Well, I am proud to be on the call today, happy to support the conversation around health coaching. As the VP of Clinical Strategy at Navigate, my responsibilities really are around working with clients and our team members to develop clinical wellbeing strategies for our clients and their members, evolving our clinical wellbeing solutions, and then also just overseeing clinical rigor, clinical governance, and oversight from a quality perspective.

Jeremy Knipper (02:20.159)

Mikki, would you give us a little bit about a little bit of your experience in coaching?

Mikki Walters (02:26.35)

Yeah, wonderful. Thanks, Jeremy. So I've been in the industry for almost 20 years already and working side by side with our client success team, Dr. Jen on our clinical side, and all of our team members at Navigate to ensure that we're bringing our coaching solutions to our clients and our partners. So on the operations side, I get the benefit of leading our coach team and our coach managers to ensure that we're delivering on the quality and the outcomes that our clients expect.

Jeremy Knipper (02:54.734)

And Jenn, can you share a little bit about your history in the healthcare space?

Jenn Lowry (02:58.662)

Absolutely. Thanks for inviting me today. So I've been in the wellbeing industry for over 20 years, which is so hard to believe and so much has changed in that 20 years. But I have the privilege of working alongside a product team that conceptualizes and then works with the technology team to develop solutions to support our clients in achieving their wellbeing goals, but also participants to live their healthiest and happiest lives. And prior to Navigate, I worked in the on-site healthcare space,

We delivered health coaching at that time as well.

Jeremy Knipper (03:32.345)

We've got the brain trust of most of our products and especially our health coaching solutions here at Navigate. So I'm really looking forward to today's conversation. Dr. Jen, can we start with you? To me, the big question is this, is health coaching in the market heating up, cooling down, staying the same? What are you seeing out there?

Jennifer Musick (03:52.157)

Yeah, I actually would say the market isn't cooling down, it's maturing. I think that wellbeing and coaching, the coaching market in particular is really undergoing a very important transition right now. Historically, think health coaching was really often positioned broadly, general like health coaching, wellness coaching, lifestyle coaching. But I think employers are smarter about the investments that they're making and they're tying.

health coaching investments to their cost and risks. So I think the future of health coaching is much more targeted and integrated. Employers really are connecting coaching to their cost and their risks. So investments in things like cardio metabolic risk reduction, obesity management, diabetes management and prevention, mental wellbeing.

GLP-1 strategies and real measurable risk reduction. in other words, would say coaching is really moving closer to a risk management strategy. So it really has evolved and matured over the years.

Jeremy Knipper (04:58.121)

Interesting. Jenn, you've been running our product team for a while. You have a lot of background on what's being asked of us from an employer standpoint, from a broker standpoint. You're seeing competing products out there. What's your take heating up, cooling down or somewhere in between?

Jenn Lowry (05:16.172)

Probably in between. And I would agree with Jen that it's really evolved over time. think if we look back and rewind the clock a little bit, think health coaching was offered to address immediate needs and the immediate costs or risks that exist today. Now, with all of the data that's available, especially around predictive modeling, employers are really looking to solutions to solve for potential risks in the future in dollars that may not be being spent today, but could be spent in the future.

So that's where I think it's kind of in between because you still have to solve for those immediate risks and those that are really causing those high costs within the claims, but also how can we prevent individuals from passing that threshold of the risk and moving into a condition risk.

Jeremy Knipper (06:05.941)

Interesting. Mikki, you work probably closest with our clients and especially with our coaching team. How have expectations changed and as Dr. Jen said, this is sort of a maturation of the product. How have expectations changed for clients and participants who are involved in the programs and our coaches too, I guess?

Mikki Walters (06:30.03)

Yeah, thanks Jeremy. So I do really get to enjoy working with our clients and sitting down with them on a regular basis to kind of share what's happening on the coaching side. And what we're seeing really is that evolution take place where health coaching was kind of a nice to have, know, provide a person that can have a great relationship on a personal level, someone you can trust to really get into your health information. And now we're really pivoting to how do we actually help again, reduce those risk factors and make that more meaningful for the individual, not just a relationship that's at the baseline, but

really helping them move that needle, educating them and really getting them to take action, you know, to address those like higher costly conditions that they do have. So we see that at program design and we see that at the member level. Our clients are adding more of our clinical focus programs and really tying their program designs to biometrics, claims information like Jenn Lowry had mentioned to kind of looked at what the future risks are bringing so that our health coaches then can use all of the information that they have to support that member along their wellness journey.

Jennifer Musick (07:33.502)

I think real quick, Jeremy, if you don't mind, I'd love to dovetail on something Mikki just said. Coaching as a, you know, no longer a nice to have, but a need to have. I actually think that that's a really key point. When we talk about the market maturing or cooling down, think employers really should stop thinking about health coaching as a standalone wellbeing activity or offering.

which kind of is really validating what we're seeing, right, within our client programs. And they really need to start thinking about coaching as part of an overall workforce health strategy. So really breaking that down is the question is no longer, should we offer coaching? The real question is, is where does individualized support create the greatest strategic value within our population to really drive towards an employer's goals and objectives?

Jeremy Knipper (08:20.597)

That's a great point. And I want to have you expand on that a little bit after I posit this. In the marketplace, there's been a significant expansion of focus on return on those investments. We've seen medical spends are always going up. Whether it be 1 % or 3 % it's never 1%. 2 or 3%, lately we've been seeing close to double digit

increases that some of our employer populations are seeing in their medical premiums, ROI is a great concept to make sure that we're doing the right thing with our spends. But I posit that ROI doesn't come without engagement. one of the, to me, one of the best tools you can have to engage a population is a coaching program, but it's also

making sure that you're doing all of those things that drive engagement, the culture building activities, the investment by your leadership team, having good strong communications. Can you talk a little bit about how coaching can help not just the ROI story, but how it can drive engagement and drive culture of the organization.

Jennifer Musick (09:43.04)

Sure, I just was having this conversation last week with a colleague. And to me, I was at a conference and there were almost like the grumblings of like, investing in culture isn't really that important anymore. And we're seeing kind of the shift towards risk management because of the rising cost of healthcare. I actually took a step back and said, it's not culture or.

risk management, right, or point solutions or coaching. It's and. As an employer, you can try to, you know, implement risk management strategies like health coaching and point solutions. But if the culture isn't being taken care of, you won't drive the engagement that you need to generate that impact. Right. So those point solutions and risk management strategies, including programs like health coaching, need to be layered into a healthy workforce culture, a workplace culture. The culture has to be in place and intact in order for employees to trust.

Those individual support programs you're bringing forward and those benefits in order to trust those programs and engage in them so that we can actually work with individuals to yield that impact. So I'm totally with you, Jeremy. It's like it's not culture or risk management. It's culture and risk management to really generate health improvement, which gets you to ROI. So that's exactly that's exactly a great point. And I happen to believe that health coaching programs and not just I, but the data supports that, is like it's a really great tool for those members that are at higher risk, higher need, and often maybe less willing to change right out of the gate, right? So it's a really great vehicle to engage those members that are harder to reach within your employee population and really build a relationship and really drive towards that, meaningful health and wellbeing improvement that we're looking for.

Jeremy Knipper (11:36.851)

Mikki, Jenn. Go ahead, please.

Jenn Lowry (11:37.046)

If you don't mind, I'll just add to that. think about, you you ask about engagement and how health coaching can impact that. I think about that relationship, Mikki, that you were talking about, that they are building that relationship with their health coach. They are an advocate for that participant. And it's not just about improving their physical fitness or their nutrition habits. They are talking to individuals about social wellbeing purpose, even their experience in the workplace, which, again, that ties back to the workplace culture. So they're really pointing them to the right resources, making sure that they're establishing healthy habits really across all of those aspects of wellbeing, not just as it relates to physical health or nutrition.

Jeremy Knipper (12:22.943)

Mikki, how are some of the ways that our coaches are helping to build that trust?

Mikki Walters (12:30.16)

Yeah, so I mean at the core, right? Health coaching is really about building that trust and educating the member and helping them remove those barriers that we were just talking about that yield high engagement across the resources that they need the most. And so from the beginning, right? The coach gets to know you on a personal level, opens that door to learn about you, learn about things that you've maybe struggled with historically or successes that you've had and really kind of feed off of that information to help you along your journey or along your path. Our coaches are dedicated to our members, so you're seeing the same coach

every single time that you're engaging. It's not a call center of coaches that you're just kind of taking your call at the time. You know who your coach is, when they're contacting you, and how to even engage with them between the coaching sessions so that member knows that they always have a resource, a kind of a team member right on their side that can help them get to where they need to be.

Jeremy Knipper (13:22.485)

I wanna switch it up a little bit and I wanna talk about planning and prioritization for our partners in HR. Your open enrollments right around the corner, you're planning for 2027. What are the kind of things you should be thinking about?

Jenn Lowry (14:34.102)

So first I would be thinking of, I think what we just talked about, culture, right? Where is my culture at and are they ready to make a change as far as adding new services to support their overall wellbeing? Then I'd be looking at data. Where are the areas that I need to be focusing on as it relates to medical and pharmacy claims? And then also, where is my overall participation in my wellbeing program? And there you can really start to see insights from maybe your HRA

or for us that total health survey or wellbeing survey to really start to direct the decisions of what type of coaching is really needed for my population.

Jennifer Musick (15:16.031)

Jeremy, if you don't mind, wouldn't mind to kind of dovetail into what Ben was just talking about. Because I actually also, again, last week having this conversation at a conference of state and local government, but I actually think employers need to remember it doesn't have to be hard. So we don't need to overcomplicate your workforce health strategies. I think we're living currently in an environment where we've got

Jeremy Knipper (15:17.759)

Yeah, please jump on in.

Jennifer Musick (15:42.194)

Our ecosystems are very complicated and complex because we're trying to tackle, again, we're using data like Jen's mentioning, using data to try to tackle areas of risk and costs for our business, which has actually kind of spiraled into lots of vendors and lots of disconnected point solutions and lots of apps for members to engage in. And as an HR leader, have to remember complexity itself becomes a barrier to engagement.

Some of the strongest outcomes that we've seen within our book of business at Navigate come from relatively simple, but highly aligned strategies, the right incentives, the right outreach, the right coaching pathways, and the right integration between culture, care, and clinical support, right? The Navigate way. The example I always think of is Lynn County, right? Lisa has used this model and generated the outcomes and impact from a health and financial perspective that employers are seeking. So as an HR

leader, my recommendation is it doesn't have to be complicated, but it does absolutely have to go beyond a digital platform and it does need to layer on top of a healthy workplace culture.

Jeremy Knipper (16:49.737)

Dr. you make a really good point about vendors and the ecosystems out there. And I've been hearing the concept of vendor fatigue, vendor overload, however you want to call it for a long time now. And for me, that's hand in hand with the conversation about return on investment is not just are your platforms performing, are your vendors performing, but how many of them you have and how many of them can actually impact

parts of your population. Mikki, I know we've got a client that's got a really interesting story around sort of vendor, the concept of vendor fatigue. They're a large scale food product in the large scale food production space. And that if you've had chicken in this country, you've probably consumed their product. Can you tell us a little bit about our friends in the farming space?

Mikki Walters (17:48.846)

Yeah, for sure. This was a really fun client to collaborate with because again, they have their culture at heart. They're really doing the best things that they can for the people that are serving, you know, their, their farming needs. And so working with them, what we realized is that again, there was that vendor fatigue and just that disconnect. So members didn't really know where to go. We have that solution at Navigate where we have the one stop shop, but the members to engage still had to do an extra step. They were confused about who their kind of trusted partner was when it came to health coaching programs or other things.

And the client was also frustrated with just lack of data transparency and feedback from those programs and those solutions. And so we were actually able to help them migrate from a different partner into our coaching programs. They actually took our condition management program because they wanted to see more than just a single condition being addressed. Like we do see with other point solutions, they wanted more of a holistic coaching approach that could address multiple conditions. And then they really did want to see that support with moving those into

and transitioning them. And so we were able to come in with that partner, transition those members that were actively working with that partner into our Navigate coaching programs. And we've already had our first kind of quarterly review with that team and they were really excited even about just the engagement that we were seeing and the data transparency and feedback that we were giving them from their members and from just the design and how we had set that up from the beginning.

Jeremy Knipper (19:12.917)

And we're really proud of the work we've done, especially with that client there. I don't think I'm talking out of class when I say that they had a challenging experience when it came to wellbeing. They had bounced from several vendors who weren't able to meet their needs. I think it was three in three years or something close to that before they landed with us. And just super proud of the work we've done with them and the results that they're seeing.

Mikki Walters (19:41.976)

And one more, Jeremy, if you don't mind, even kind of on that opposite side. this group that we were talking about again, had kind of a rotating door of partners, right? They had kind of a, the three over three years before they came to navigate with those solutions. Another one though, we've been working with for a number of years and have had very high engagement, a very strong culture. And even with rolling out kind of our design and our model and some of our new coaching solutions that again, meet the member where they are, are a lot more holistic than some of the point solutions that we see in the market.

Jeremy Knipper (19:43.125)

Okay.

Mikki Walters (20:11.98)

We had over 400 individuals with that client in the first 60 days reach out and start engaging in coaching. That's a pretty big percentage for their population and I think it was back to that engagement again. They trusted the culture, kind of heard the needs from those members, and they had easy access to get into those kind of coaching solutions right on platform.

Jennifer Musick (20:30.907)

Mikki, that's the manufacturing client, right? Yeah, see, so, yeah, so for our HR folks out there, right, that are like, we're in manufacturing and coaching definitely doesn't work. I think our experience over the last 20 plus years has been very different, right? That individual supports almost a better way to engage that kind of a workforce. Yeah.

Mikki Walters (20:33.336)

As a manufacturing client as well.

Jeremy Knipper (20:51.701)

That's one of the things I'm most proud of at Navigate. Every year, Jenn's team comes up with the annual aggregate book of business details and we break that down by clients and by industry. And manufacturing has been at the top of our list, especially last year, which is, everybody thinks that's a really challenging segment and it is, but only if your solution is one size fits all, only if you're not listening to

their needs and understanding their culture and how they communicate, how they do business. And we follow up by manufacturing, by healthcare, which is another really challenging population. Geographically diverse, spread out at different locations, working odd shifts. I I'm proud of the fact that we do our best work when it's the hardest thing we're trying to do, with the hardest populations to reach.

That's just me bragging for a couple of minutes. So if you're out there and you've got vendor fatigue, Jenn Lowry, what should an organization do to evaluate whether their point solution is adding value or like Dr. Jen said, just adding complexity and noise?

Jenn Lowry (22:08.158)

Yeah, I think the first thing is understand your data. What data is available to you? What data is not available to you? I think it's another key factor that really people don't identify enough, right? Sometimes we just take what is available to us as is and we just move forward. But are you asking yourself the right question of do you have the data needed to really be strategic in your program and also move the needle in your health outcomes or just the goals that you want to achieve? I think then it's really about

where are you identifying overlap of those surfaces? And I think Dr. Jen, you've done a really great job within client conversations and just on our organization of talking about how our health coaching sometimes isn't about replacing, but it's about augmenting one of those point solutions.

Jennifer Musick (22:53.535)

Thank you.

Jennifer Musick (22:59.155)

Yeah, I just had that conversation this morning on a client call, Jenn. And I would always say is, you know, at Navigate, we're going to come in to that coaching conversation and say, is this an and situation? Right? Can is there something you have in place that we could actually augment or enhance? Or is it an or? Right? Is that current solution not meeting your intended objective, your needs, and is our solution a better fit? And there's no, you know, right? There's no

Same answer every single time, right? It requires that data analysis and evaluation, Jenn, that you're talking about, yeah.

Jeremy Knipper (23:33.523)

I know we're talking a lot about health coaching today, but I think it would be only fair for us to say that we're not trying to tell people to switch out their vendors.

Jennifer Musick (23:44.733)

Yeah, for sure.

Jeremy Knipper (23:45.865)

There's plenty of really good vendors out there that are doing really good work. And our platform and our program design and our strategy that we work with you on is built around incorporating tools that are working. And I think what we're talking about here is just looking at the ones that aren't working and aren't getting engagement and are they still the best solution? Which leads me to a conversation about the business case for health coaching, right?

bit about this and a lot of it feels like it's an either or with some of these individual platforms. Dr. Jen, can you talk a little bit about the case for a point solution that addresses one, you know, one thing exclusively and compare that to the case of a broad, robust, holistic solution suite of coaching opportunities?

Jennifer Musick (24:45.651)

Yeah, certainly. Again, I think you've heard this a number of times, especially from Jenn, but it's like that you have to use your data. I think for employers in that business case, the first thing you have to identify is what does success look like? What are you trying to accomplish? What is that goal? What is that objective? What data do you have available or do you not have available that helps you evaluate whether your current strategies and initiatives are moving towards those goals?

and those objectives. And then you can really decide, right? If it is making progress and you are meeting the intended objectives, then it's stay the course and continue to evaluate and actually start to evaluate the next opportunity. If they're not, if your current strategies and initiatives aren't moving you towards your goals, that's really where you can start to dig in and understand why not, right? Do we have an engagement issue? Do we need to focus more on engagement strategies?

Or do we just have a solution that doesn't mean the needs of our members? I'd say one of the strongest business cases for a more comprehensive, holistic or integrated approach is, you know, having a bunch of apps for members to engage in kind of back to the simplicity story is the more the more different partners we bring into our health and wellbeing strategy, we're asking our members to engage different platforms, different apps. Many of those point solutions are, you know, digital first solution.

which is great for some members, but often leaves members then navigating multiple different platforms and apps. that may generate the need and the business case for kind of looking at a different approach, an approach that's more comprehensive. The employer that Mikki was talking about, they were really lacking data, right? So that was the number one reason for them to ask more questions and evaluate our coaching offering, is they weren't even getting engagement

let alone impact data or utilization data was missing as well. And then we also take a very comprehensive approach when we, in all of our coaching programs, especially in our condition management coaching program, we're supporting members at highest risk, highest need across their chronic, all of their chronic diseases. We're not just focused on a single condition. So that made it more appealing for this employer. And it starts with his goals, right? I mean, he understood that his goal

Jennifer Musick (27:13.473)

It was health and measurable health improvement in the areas of diabetes and heart disease. So knowing that our condition management coaching program takes a holistic approach at working with those individual members and engaging their personal physicians, that was more appealing to him. Our solution in that case actually moved him closer to his program goals and objectives. And that's really the business case then, right? Is like, are you trying to augment what you're currently offering? And then how do you find the financing mechanism to do that?

or if it's not meeting your objectives, right, it creates like a repurposing of those budget dollars so that you can, you know, work with an initiative or a strategy that really helps you work towards those goals or objectives. Hoping I answered that as clearly as I could, Jeremy, I know that's a, that's probably a podcast, that's probably a podcast on its own, right, is making the business case for coaching. But I'm gonna take that all the way back to the beginning, right, which is like,

Jeremy Knipper (28:00.915)

It's a big question. Yeah.

Jennifer Musick (28:10.367)

We really should be not thinking about coaching as a separate wellness activity, right? Or a separate initiative. When you're talking about your wellbeing, your health and wellbeing strategies, you should really, I mean, really is a, know, where does individual support have the opportunity to drive impact towards our goals, right? That's how we should be thinking about health coaching as part of our overall health and wellbeing approach.

Jenn Lowry (28:36.384)

Yeah, Jen, if I can just add to that as you were talking through that, I kept thinking about...

Health coaching with Navigate is not the same as health coaching at an EAP or health coaching through another vendor. It is really important to evaluate health coaching as the model and what methodologies are used. What do those sessions look like and what are the outcomes of that coaching that's being offered? So again, it's really hard in the market because you see all of these point solutions offering coaching, but some of those point solutions are really satisfied with

Jenn Lowry (29:12.392)

I think we heard recently a 1 % engagement rate. How is that actually driving outcomes, right? And so that's why it's really important to look at the model. And again, look at that as you're building that business case, understanding where you want to go, not just this year, in the five years, and then finding a solution or a coaching solution that aligns with that.

Jennifer Musick (29:35.474)

Sure. Peel back the layers of the onion for sure. Jeremy, real quick on the business case front. I think this actually brings us to a topic that we shouldn't I think about immediately, which is, you know, right now, GLP one, like cost urgent is creating urgency. Right. So GLP one costs for obesity care. Obesity management is creating urgency within the employer community. Right. So right there.

Jennifer Musick (30:01.405)

Right. That's an opportunity to create a business case. I happen to believe that the GLP one, a GLP ones for obesity management have really accelerated the importance of health coaching. employers realize that obesity management can't just be solved through medication access alone and long-term success does depend on bringing in behavior change, nutrition support, emotional wellbeing, accountability, all leading towards sustainable behavior change.

So that really means that coaching is part of that operational strategy around GLP-1 cost management. So again, back to business case, Jeremy, right? Is like if that's...

An issue that you're dealing with. know right now I've been talking to brokers that are like employers are thinking about walking back their GLP one benefit right around obesity care and management and others that are don't want to go that route, right? How do we do things differently so we can better manage those costs? So again, all about the business case. So back to Jenn's point to understand your goals, understand what you're trying to achieve and then really dig into those partners to make sure that you understand what the model looks like and if it can actually help you accomplish your goals.

Mikki Walters (31:12.356)

Yeah, and on the GLP-1 topic there, Jeremy, sorry, I was just going to say we're seeing that with our real clients today already, right? So the partners that have started to use us and our weight management programs to support the mitigating the risk around the cost of GLP-1s and even ensuring that the people that are accessing a GLP-1 have that resource for behavior change and not just medication. We've had a group already that is starting to report that individuals are already reducing or not even going on a GLP-1 because they're seeing the success and just a weight

Jeremy Knipper (31:13.073)

Speaking of GLP, please jump on in.

Mikki Walters (31:42.242)

management coaching program, which the data shows is going to last for like sustainable long-term health improvements and not just kind of that quick fix. So pairing those together, we're seeing that with a few clients and a lot more attraction from the current clients of how do I now get smarter with my business case to make room for that? We had one other client that they had her condition management program. They had some great success over the last few years. We're actually reducing their budget for condition management because people are healthier. What that did for that client?

It opened up about $10,000 for them to use on weight management now because they weren't tackling everything at once but saying, now I've got some savings here. We reduced the risk of my population. GLP-1 is still a craze. Let's plug in weight management now and start to get ahead of this one as well. So again, business case of you don't have to do health coaching all over. Tackle one thing at a time and we can help you do that with a number of different solutions to kind of plug and play when it's appropriate.

Jennifer Musick (32:31.657)

Yeah, and all at once,

Jeremy Knipper (32:39.145)

Mikki, you talk about our GLP-1 work and our weight management program. We've got coaching solutions around a wide variety of topics that address a wide variety of needs. GLP-1 support, weight management, mental health, career development, women's health coaching. What are you hearing from our clients around all of those different offerings that can help them out?

Mikki Walters (33:06.786)

Excitement really. means a ton of excitement knowing again that they can partner with Navigate and get those needs all in one place with the same care team, the same trusted coach team that we have in place at Navigate today. Mental health is a big one. Over the last year we've actually plugged in mental health coaching sessions to a number of our programs because we know that at the core your mental health really does impact how you are managing your diabetes or your professional development or other areas of your life that can impact

you as a whole person. And so clients are excited. Not that we just have kind of specialized programs, but within our specialized programs you have multiple components, multiple care team members with those different specialties that they feel like they're bringing something to the table to again address the whole person.

Jennifer Musick (33:55.616)

Yeah, connect that to Jenn. Yeah, yeah, Jeremy, I was just thinking, I'm like, that's something Jenn mentioned earlier, right? And navigate coaching is different because it's whole person or maybe it was you, Jeremy, but Mikki just described that, right? That whole person support even within a navigate coaching program. Yeah.

Jeremy Knipper (34:12.895)

Why is Navigate pursuing such a diverse coaching set, Jenn Lowery? And career development traditionally hasn't been rolled into the wellbeing space. Mental health has been adjacent to the wellbeing space. And women's health has gotten a lot of run lately, but traditionally it has been very much sort of a swept under the rug topic.

Can you talk a little bit about our strategy around developing these broader solution sets?

Jenn Lowry (34:48.044)

I mean, it really comes down to what I mentioned earlier as wellbeing isn't just thought of as the physical health and the nutrition side of things, right? It really is about the whole person. It's not just the whole person who we are in our personal life, but how we show up to work. And that's one of the reasons we developed our professional development coaching, which we launched in January. It's tied back to our Navigate You Assessment, which is a personality assessment. that assessment gives somebody the results of what there are

archetypes are and what their strengths, that coaching helps them better understand that result, right? About what that archetype means when it says that I'm a coach and I am less on the humorous side and I'm less on the creative side, right? That doesn't actually mean that. So that coaching brings that person through that process of better understanding who they are, how they show up to work, how they show up in conversations, and then help them apply their learning to the real world.

Jeremy Knipper (35:52.479)

We're running out of time and I want to make sure we get a chance to talk about all the good work we're doing in the state of Nebraska. We won't get into too many specifics about it, but we've got plenty of large clients in Nebraska who are doing good work and that we're doing good work for them and in interesting ways. One of them is a GLP One companion program. Mikki, would you be willing to talk a little bit about what we're doing?

Mikki Walters (36:23.704)

Yeah, for sure. So this is a health system who had an internal kind of program around GLP-1s and they came to navigate and said, we need some help here. We really want to see what we can do to offer again, that behavioral side of weight management before granting access or coverage for a GLP-1 on our insurance, because they were really seeing those costs increase exponentially. So they partnered with us. That design worked really well where a member would actually have a prescription from their provider for that GLP-1.

Before actually having that covered on their health plan, they would complete the majority of our weight management program. And what we saw there, and we've got some early results coming again, is that those individuals, some of those individuals didn't even fill their prescription. They were having great success with their weight loss, working with their health coach team. They didn't even go that route. Or if individuals were maybe already on that medication, then they were starting to phase off because they were seeing again that success and the coaches were able to help them through that transition, again, for long-term success that way.

We're also seeing that pick up with a number of client requests. So, yeah.

Jeremy Knipper (37:23.663)

If I recall that number is, if I recall that's 29 % of members reported reducing or never using GLP ones because of the coaching program that we're talking about the value of coaching and the, you know, the story around how to, you know, how to, how to justify the spend on that.

29 % of members reducing their utilization or not going down that route is a, you there's a very solid dollar value associated with that depending on what your spend is. We also do work with a different Nebraska organization that is sort of at the other end of coaching. Would you talk a little bit about that as well?

Mikki Walters (38:09.902)

Yeah, this was exciting really to work with this group because they've had wellbeing programs and solutions in place for a long time, but very piecemealed, I would say. They weren't really connecting them all until like what they were trying to accomplish for their overall objectives. So they were doing biometric health screenings. They had a number of resources available to their members, but they weren't even using that health screening data to inform the program and the platform to personalize the journey for the member. So first step was you're investing already in these screenings. Individuals are taking action to go find out their results.

Move that information into the platform so that we can help paint that picture and direct that person to the next best action. In addition, this group thought that their members, they're in healthcare, they know their numbers, they're educated about what they need to know about their blood pressures and their cholesterol values. But we added a wellbeing results review to give those individuals access to actually talk to a coach, maybe educate them again about gaps that they would have in their risks, and also point them to that next step. They're busy, right? They're taking care of our people.

They guide them to here's the one next thing that you can do to help benefit you as an individual really hit home for this group. And again, it was kind of a jump in kind of bringing all of their solutions together in a more strategic way. And we're coming out the gate here this year and I think we already had almost 30 % of their population sign up for a wellbeing results review. And they were pleasantly surprised with that. It was something that they're like, really? They really need to meet with a health coach? We're in health care. And it's like, yes, everybody needs a health coach in one way or another to kind of help you move along that journey.

Jennifer Musick (39:46.836)

think, that's real quick, real quick, Jeremy. Yeah, I think that that story just kind of highlights that, you know, really the future of workforce health and wellbeing isn't just awareness, right? It really is converting awareness into action, which generates measurable health, wellbeing and risk movement. And that's where clinical coaching, right? And navigate coaching fits strategically. So it's the navigate way, right? We know that.

Jeremy Knipper (39:46.879)

Well, we're coming to the end here. sorry, go ahead, Jen.

Jennifer Musick (40:11.983)

We believe at Navigate that the most effective wellbeing moves participants from awareness into meaningful action that generates impact. And so we're really proud to be leading the charge around culture, care, and clinical here at Navigate with health coaching really being the human layer, that intervention layer that really is the final missing link for most employer wellbeing programs. So to Mikki's point, lots of awareness going on within this workforce until they connected culture, care, and clinical now.

They're really moving the needle and moving that program forward.

Jeremy Knipper (40:44.405)

I think that is a great place to wrap up the podcast. great, great exclamation point at the end of our thought. But we always end the pod with a section that we like to call vest day ever, which if you're paying attention to what we're wearing, I don't think we have any vests on. But our founder and CEO Troy is a fan of vests and has been for a long time. And we want to make sure we do right by him.

So Jenn Lowry, give us your vest day ever.

Jenn Lowry (41:18.816)

Vest day ever, but best day ever is how I'm have to say it.

It's actually coming up is what I feel like. So on Friday will be my son's last day of middle school. And so I feel like he has survived middle school, but also myself and my husband can also celebrate survival of the first child going through three years of middle school. It has been a challenge, uphill battle sometimes, but we did it.

Jeremy Knipper (41:49.109)

Congratulations on last day of middle school coming up. Dr. Jen, best day ever.

Jennifer Musick (41:50.195)

Man, well, mine is also coming up this week and my middle daughter, Bella, graduates from the University of Iowa with her economics degree. She's graduating with honors and we are so extremely proud of her and looking forward to celebrating her this weekend.

Jeremy Knipper (42:11.976)

Mikki?

Mikki Walters (42:15.568)

Okay, I'm to go backwards, not forward here yet. I don't know what it's going to be yet, but I'm surprised Jenn Lowry didn't say this one. I'd say best day ever. I've got three littles and it was seeing them light up for their first time ever Disney experience was pretty awesome. So I'm going to use that one.

Jennifer Musick (42:28.804)

Jeremy Knipper (42:31.861)

We've got a lot of fans of Disney on this.

Jenn Lowry (42:31.948)

I understand that.

Jennifer Musick (42:34.463)

It made the anti-Disney Mikki a big Disney fan. So yeah. It does. It does.

Mikki (42:39.022)

Yeah, Very much.

Jenn Lowry (42:39.7)

Your heart just melts a little bit when you see their reactions. Both at the same time.

Jeremy Knipper (42:43.861)

Heart melts and your wallet melts.

Jeremy Knipper (42:48.949)

For me, it is graduation parties. I don't go to a lot of them. My wife does as a teacher, but I was able to go one last weekend and see some family and it was just heartwarming and delightful and had a great time and grateful to be included in something like that. And it sounds like it's a theme for this time of year as well. So I think that's where we'll end it.

Our podcast today was all about coaching. And at a fundamental level, coaching is about human interaction. The people on the podcast here that are talking to you today are people that I trust and I reach out to when I'm in need and I can be vulnerable around them.

And I hope you have these kind of people in your life and I hope you get to be that kind of person to someone. I'm Jeremy Knipper on behalf of your regular host Troy, Dr. Jen, Mikki and Jenn and the rest of the people here at Navigate who go to work for you. I wanna say thank you and keep on doing good things.