Dr Jonny Bloomfield, 20th May 2026
UKIHCA Registered Health Coach & Duality Healthcare Brand Ambassador
I’m Dr Jonny Bloomfield and I’m a Register Health Coach with the UKIHCA. I’m also Northern Ireland’s first Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach and a Brand Ambassador for Duality Healthcare.
The professional body I belong to, the UK International Health Coaching Association (UKIHCA) have just released their 2026 guide for the public, Take the Lead on Your Health: Your Health, Your Decisions, Your Life. It makes a really strong case for us to seek practical, trusted support to understand our health, build our confidence, and make sustainable changes that work in real life.
Our changing health landscape
We all know one thing. Lifestyle-driven health conditions are rising, and many of these are linked to factors we have a high degree of influence over. It points to increasing rates of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, certain cancers, and chronic pain, alongside the growing impact of poor sleep, stress, inactivity, and unhealthy diet patterns.
Persistent pain (chronic pain) is the most prevalent long-term condition globally and here in NI and it often underpins many other long-term conditions.
The Health Foundation report (see image below) suggests that by 2040, chronic pain will increase in prevalence by 32% to become a leading long-term condition, followed by anxiety, depression and diabetes.
Here in Northern Ireland:
- 1 in 3 adults are living with multiple long-term conditions, many of which are preventable through lifestyle and health behaviour changes.
- Modifiable risk factors (things we can change) contribute to over 40% of premature deaths.
- Adults with poor lifestyle patterns can lose up to 10 years of healthy life expectancy (healthspan) compared to those with balanced nutrition, regular physical activity, and effective stress management.
The UKIHCA urges us to incorporate a more preventative mindset to our healthcare and views this as an important way forward. There’s so much to be gained by eating healthier, meeting physical activity guidelines, effective stress management, getting quality sleep, and building better lifestyle habits. These can all significantly reduce our health risks, improve our quality of life and enhance our long-term outcomes.
“Committing to small consistent actions can protect our health.“
This benefits not just ourselves, but our whole wider health system. Lifestyle-related illnesses are putting huge pressure on our HSCNI services, resulting in longer waiting times, and rising costs, making the case that prevention and self-management are not optional extras; they are essential components of having a healthier future in Northern Ireland.
Research consistently shows that preventive lifestyle choices and supported health behaviour change can dramatically reduce risk:
- Type 2 diabetes: Risk reduced by 50–60% through diet, weight management, and physical activity
- Cardiovascular disease: Risk reduction of 20–30% with regular exercise, healthy eating, and stress management
- Mental wellbeing: Improvements in mood, resilience, and cognitive function through exercise, sleep optimisation, and social connection.
What does “Taking the Lead” mean?
The phrase “taking the lead on your health” does not mean doing everything alone, or better than everyone else. The guide carefully explains that we’re not aiming for perfection, following rigid rules, or being told to always try harder.
Instead, “taking the lead” means:
- understanding and appreciating what affects our health.
- improving our health literacy.
- making better informed decisions.
- building healthy habits that are realistic and sustainable.
Meaningful long-lasting changes usually start small: by adding vegetables to meals, walking after lunch, or taking five minutes for some self-care. These may all sound modest, but the experts who wrote the guide argue that if these are repeated consistently over time, they can create measurable improvements in energy, mood, resilience, confidence and wellbeing.
“Health improvement does not require a dramatic overhaul, but rather a series of practical, achievable steps that fit into ordinary life.”
Case Example: John, Senior Leader, 55
John, 55, is a senior leader in a company that provides access to executive coaching. John’s role is demanding and stressful and he been feeling the need to seek help at work. John has also long been aware that type 2 diabetes runs in his family. He has consulted with his GP, who has been monitoring him and advising on how John can lower the risk to progressing to a type 2 diabetes diagnosis.
Each GP appointment reminds him of the risks, yet he’s struggled to make meaningful changes amidst a busy work schedule and family commitments. He wants to take a proactive approach and begins with small steps: He swaps sugary drinks for water and notices gradually how much more energetic he feels by mid-morning. After lunch, he begins taking a brisk 10-minute walk around the office block with a colleague (no work-related chat!), initially feeling self-conscious, but soon notices the clarity and calm it brings to the rest of his afternoon.
To ensure his efforts are structured and sustainable, decides to work with a UKIHCA Health Coach. Together, they explore his daily routines, uncover the drivers for John’s unhealthy habits, and co-create practical strategies tailored to his lifestyle. Over the course of several months, these seemingly modest changes — better hydration, short bursts of activity, thoughtful reflection on food choices — begin to build up. John sees improvements in his blood sugar readings, energy levels, and overall mood, all while maintaining regular GP check-ups.
What started as small, deliberate steps gradually evolves into a confident, self-empowered approach to managing his health.
Why our health literacy matters.
There’s a big emphasis in the guide on improving our health literacy. This is our ability to find, understand, and act on health information effectively, something a lot of us really struggle with. This is a major issue all over the UK, with so much noise out there from influencers and sellers, where advice can be overwhelming, inconsistent, incorrect or simply too challenging to apply in daily life.
Coaching acts as that bridge between expert advice and everyday action. A skilful coach helps you make sense of information, prioritise what matters, and turn evidence-based guidance into actionable steps that you can actually manage and sustain.
Why behaviour change is hard.
We’ve all been there. Most of us in the first week of January at least. We say “This year I’m going to change”, and then we get to Friday.
One of the strongest sections explains why good intentions so often fail. Knowing what to do is not the same as being able to do it, consistently.
Our daily habits are shaped by routine, environment, stress, emotion, social expectations, and fatigue. We understand the advice, but we struggle to apply it. For example, everybody knows that smoking is bad for our health, but according to the Northern Ireland Audit Office, 18% of Belfast’s population are still smoking.
Sustainable changes usually requires structure, accountability, reflection, and support.
This is where lifestyle medicine and health coaching come in. Rather than simply handing out a set of instructions, a health coach helps a person explore what is getting in the way, what matters most to them, what changes are realistically possible and then agree on a plan and a checkpoint. This approach makes behaviour change less about willpower and discipline, and more about design, support, compassion and self-awareness.
The role of lifestyle medicine.
Lifestyle medicine is a rapidly growing field within modern healthcare. This involves the evidence-based use by healthcare professionals to help build daily habits to prevent and manage long-term conditions across six core pillars:
- Nutrition
- Physical activity
- Sleep
- Stress management
- Social connection
- Reducing harmful substances.
What’s really important is to recognise that these pillars all interact with each other. Better sleep supports more exercise. More activity improves mood and stress. Less stress can improve our eating patterns. Our health is incredibly interconnected, so by making progress in one area, we find that we enable momentum in others.
What is health coaching?
Health coaching is a supportive, empowering partnership that helps people turn good intentions into lasting change. Rather than telling you what to do, a health coach works with you to explore what matters most to you, understand the barriers that are getting in your way, and build practical steps that fit into your real life.
The real value of health coaching is that it helps you move from feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or uncertain to feeling clearer, more confident, and more in control. With the right support, change becomes less about willpower and more about momentum, self-belief, and consistent action. A good coach helps you connect the dots between your daily habits, your energy, your stress, your health goals, and the life you want to lead.
Working with a health coach can make healthy changes feel achievable, even when life is busy or complicated. It gives you space to reflect, encouragement to keep going, and accountability to stay on track, while helping you build the skills and confidence to sustain progress long after the coaching ends.
Why professional standards matter?
UKIHCA Registered Health Coaches are able to provide high levels of quality, trust and credibility as they have signed up to work within defined professional standards, scope of practice, insurance, supervision, confidentiality and continuing professional development requirements.
These high standards are important because it helps the public distinguish between unregulated coaching and professionally recognised health coaching. This means UKIHCA coaches have been highly trained, have demonstrated competency, are fully qualified, insured and work within professional boundaries and know when to refer on to clinical or specialist support.
Our emerging profession is not only about providing motivation and support, but also about safety, accountability, and high degrees of trust and empathy.
The Big Picture
At its heart of this guide, the UKIHCA is calling for us to address a re-balance of the relationship between ourselves and our whole health system. It argues that we should not simply be passive recipients of healthcare, but active partners in our own health journey.
With a shift in mindset and the right support available to us, we can build healthier routines, manage risk factors earlier, and live better with reduced long-term conditions.
We’re encouraged to begin with one achievable change, adopt a growth mindset, look long-term, seek trustworthy support, and recognise that meaningful progress is built step by step.
Now it’s time for you to “Take the Lead”
The UKIHCA’s Take the Lead on Your Health Guide has provided us with a persuasive argument for a more empowering model of healthcare, where we are supported to understand our needs, make better informed choices, and build long-lasting habits alongside professional guidance.
If you would like to learn more about our Health Coaching service at Duality, click here
Read the complete UKIHCA Guide here: Take-the-Lead-on-Your-Health-A-Guide-2026.pdf
