About Health Coach OT
Health Coach OT is a publication for occupational therapy practitioners who want to use coaching skills to support meaningful, sustainable change.
Through articles, podcast conversations, and educational resources, Health Coach OT explores how coaching can strengthen occupational therapy practice—ethically, practically, and without asking practitioners to step away from their professional identity.
Why Health Coach OT exists
Clients often understand what they have been advised to do. The harder part is translating those recommendations into everyday life and sustaining change over time.
Coaching skills can help bridge that gap.
Coaching is not a replacement for occupational therapy or a separate professional identity. It is a set of relational and clinical skills that can strengthen how occupational therapy practitioners support behavior change, self-management, chronic condition management, and long-term follow-through.
When thoughtfully integrated into practice, coaching skills can help:
Increase clients’ ownership of their goals
Translate recommendations into realistic daily routines
Support lasting health behavior change
Create more collaborative therapeutic relationships
Give practitioners greater clarity and satisfaction in their work
Health Coach OT helps practitioners develop these skills while remaining grounded in occupational therapy’s scope, values, and distinct professional identity.
What you’ll find here
Health Coach OT examines:
Coaching as a clinical skill set within occupational therapy
Ethical considerations and scope-of-practice boundaries
Practical ways to support motivation and follow-through
Behavior-change science translated into everyday practice
Collaborative approaches to goal setting and self-management
What it means to become more coach-like while remaining firmly rooted in OT
Browse previous articles, podcast episodes, and resources in the publication archives.
Meet Jaclyn Schwartz
I’m Jaclyn Schwartz, the founder and author of Health Coach OT. I am an occupational therapist (OTR/L) and National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC) with a background in clinical practice, research, and occupational therapy education.
My occupational therapy experience spans acute care, early intervention, and outpatient practice. Across these settings, I repeatedly encountered the same challenge: knowing what to do did not necessarily make it easy for clients to incorporate recommendations into their daily lives.
That experience led me to explore how coaching skills could help occupational therapy practitioners move beyond simply providing information—and instead support clients in identifying personally meaningful goals, navigating barriers, and taking ownership of change.
I have also served as faculty in occupational therapy education and conducted NIH-funded research focused on medication adherence and health behavior change. My scholarship includes more than 30 peer-reviewed publications. I have been recognized as a Fellow of the American Occupational Therapy Association through its Roster of Fellows.
In addition to my work with Health Coach OT, I teach the Practitioner-to-Coach program in partnership with Aspire OT.
Who this publication is for
Health Coach OT is for occupational therapy practitioners who:
Value the profession and want to deepen their practice
Are interested in health behavior change and self-management
Want a clearer structure for supporting follow-through
Care about ethical scope and professional identity
Want to work in greater collaboration with their clients
If that sounds like you, you’re in the right place.
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