At the American Council on Exercise (ACE), we believe that appropriately credentialed health and fitness professionals should be part of the healthcare team. In this presentation we show how understanding preventative care, and how appropriately credentialed health and fitness professionals fit into the healthcare system, can ultimately lead to greater outcomes for the public.

1. Fitness as a Part of
the U.S. Healthcare System:
A big, even inevitable idea
for the industry and the world
Scott Goudeseune, President & CEO
Janet Frenkel, Chief Operating Officer
Cedric Bryant, Ph.D., Chief Science Officer
American Council on Exercise

2. WHO ACE IS
• Largest nonprofit fitness certification, education, training
program in the world
• Certifier of more than 55,000 fitness and health professionals
• Unbiased evaluator of fitness products and trends
• Trusted voice and resource on all things fitness among
professionals, media, and consumers
• Connector of consumers to certified professionals
• Builder of collaborative relationships across the fitness and
health sectors
• Leading the professions we represent more directly into
accountability in the fight against obesity.
• Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HADPun3lcns
© 2014 ACE

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Healthcare
Fitness
© 2014 ACE

4. What’s happening in
healthcare today?
Out of control costs are
sparking reexamination of
basic premises.
© 2014 ACE

5. Longstanding basic premise:
People live their lives wholly apart from healthcare system. Then
when they get sick, they go to a doctor for diagnosis and
treatment. In essence, system reacts to illness, then charges fees
for services (as opposed to outcomes).
© 2014 ACE

6. New emerging thought:
The healthcare system should intervene earlier in peoples’ lives
with a variety of health providers who are qualified to help them
make and sustain behavior choices that stave off preventable
illness and ward off chronic conditions.
In other words, while the system would still react to illness, it also
would invest in proactive prevention of illness.
© 2014 ACE

7. What’s happening in
fitness today?
Pressure to evolve both
from within our industry
and externally.
© 2014 ACE

8. Longstanding basic premise:
People will come to our facilities because we are appealing, and
the services we offer are needed and beneficial. Thus “our industry
will be relevant”, and it will thrive.
© 2014 ACE

9. New emerging thought:
It is no longer a foregone conclusion that an increasingly,
startlingly unhealthy population will seek us out, no matter how
appealing our facilities may be. For those who do seek us out,
there’s no assurance that they’ll stick around for long.
© 2014 ACE

10. Other factors shaping our future outlook:
• Limited member loyalty and high attrition
• Slow growth or no growth in gym memberships
• Little penetration into new populations
• Advancing conversation about the possible role of fitness
facilities and pros in the healthcare continuum
• Growing pressure by governments and other powerful forces
to raise standards for fitness professionals
© 2014 ACE

11. It means an opportunity to
embrace both our circumstances
and our missions to evolve with
the times, situate ourselves to
impact more lives, and situate
ourselves to thrive by doing so.
What does all this mean?

12. Our opportunity is grand. But what are our barriers?
They’re the same ones businesses always face when
staring down the prospect of significant evolution.
ADDRESSING BARRIERS TO CHANGE
Uncertainty
Inertia
Lack of guarantees
Fear of the unknown
Comfort with how things currently work
And in our case, belief that insurance reimbursement
might just come along and make all this easy
© 2014 ACE

13. Is health insurance reimbursement the piece we need
before we commit to evolve?
ADDRESSING BARRIERS TO CHANGE
© 2014 ACE

14. Pros
• It’s safe
• It’s comfortable
Cons
• It may be
foolhardy
Waiting for insurance
reimbursement before
we evolve…
ADDRESSING BARRIERS TO CHANGE
© 2014 ACE

15. AN INDUSTRY THAT LEAPFROGGED
Athletic trainers saw an opportunity, got out of their
own comfort zones, and made themselves relevant
to vastly more people.
© 2014 ACE

16. AN INDUSTRY THAT LEAPFROGGED
• 1969 AMA recognizes importance of athletic training (AT)
• 1971-Texas becomes first state to license AT
• 1990- AT recognized as allied health profession by AMA
• 2006- Zachery Lystedt suffers brain injury following return
to middle school football game
• 2009- Zackery Lystedt Law passed (governs return to field)
• 2009-Fair Practice Settlement with APTA
• 2012-Junior Seau Dies
• 2013-Concussion legislation passed in 48 states
• 2013-Student Athlete’s Bill of Rights Introduced
• 2013-Licensure in 47 States + District of Columbia
© 2014 ACE

17. ACE has decided that the
risks of waiting to evolve
are far too great to let it all
just happen to us.
So ACE is leading.
WHERE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD

18. ACE BOLDLY LEADING INTO NEW LANDSCAPE
© 2014 ACE

20. ACE BOLDLY LEADING INTO NEW LANDSCAPE
Leadership & Collaboration
© 2014 ACE

21. ACE BOLDLY LEADING INTO NEW LANDSCAPE
Piloting of new
programs and
supporting research on
behavior change and
the prevention and
management of obesity
and other chronic
conditions
© 2014 ACE

22. ACE BOLDLY LEADING INTO NEW LANDSCAPE
100,000 by 2018
© 2014 ACE

23. ACE BOLDLY LEADING INTO NEW LANDSCAPE
Engaging in
government affairs
Leading fitness certification
organizations into public affairs
and issue advocacy to support the
growth, sustainability, and impact
of our industry and our profession.
© 2014 ACE

24. ACE BOLDLY LEADING INTO NEW LANDSCAPE
• Professionally supervised physical
activity in communities and public
spaces.
• Recognition of fitness professionals as
health providers
• Behavior-change facilitation and
addressing the obesity epidemic.
• Incentivizing employee wellness
programs that support physical activity
and sustainable behavior change
Issues
© 2014 ACE

25. ACE BOLDLY LEADING INTO NEW LANDSCAPE
• Responding to state and municipal
lawmakers examining the issues.
• Briefing federal
lawmakers, staffs, regulators, and
opinion-shapers in Washington.
• Educating our certified professionals.
• Talking to the news media.
• Chairing the all new Coalition for the
Registration of Exercise Professionals.
What ACE
is doing on
these issues
© 2014 ACE

26. JOIN A NEW PUBLIC-AFFAIRS COALITION
Nonprofit 501(c)6 organization committed to advancing the
fitness profession and securing recognition of practitioners
who hold NCCA-accredited certification as healthcare
providers.
© 2014 ACE

27. A NEW PUBLIC AFFAIRS COALITION
• American Council on Exercise (ACE) (charter member)
• American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) (charter member)
• Cooper Institute (CI)
• National Council on Strength and Fitness (NCSF) (charter member)
• National Exercise Trainers Association (NETA)
• National Strength and Conditioning Association
(NSCA) (charter member)
• Pilates Method Alliance (PMA)
© 2014 ACE

28. A NEW REGISTRY
Now those who seek to hire, work with,
or refer to an NCCA-certified exercise
professional can easily find one and
verify his or her credentials.
© 2014 ACE

29. BENEFITS FOR INDUSTRY AND PROFESSION
• Public will now have single destination to easily identify
and verify uniformly qualified candidates for hire
• Clubs and facilities will have an easy way to confirm the
status of accredited exercise professionals
• Huge step towards inevitable expansion of highly qualified
exercise professionals into the healthcare continuum
© 2014 ACE

30. What does all of this mean for our
industry and our future?
© 2014 ACE

31. • Accredited certification of professionals will be
demanded by the public and may become a
legal requirement for the industry.
• As fitness
professionals
become recognized
as healthcare
providers, they will
need places to
provide that care.

32. • For clubs and facilities to be trusted in such a
new way, the public must have confidence that
the people who work there possess ironclad
credentials.
• Clubs and facilities
could become known
as places to find highly
qualified prevention
and wellness-
intervention services.

33. • For clubs and facilities to be ideally
positioned in this new paradigm, they
must get get actively engaged and
involved today.

34. Imagine…

35. CALL TO ACTION
Clubs and facilities should be proactive to keep up with the demands of
the public even before they become legal requirements
• Place greater emphasis on the certifications held by the exercise professionals at their
locations
• Emphasize the ever-increasing value of recognized accreditations to the exercise
professionals who hold them and to the public
• Make use of, and encourage the public to make use of, USREPS to confirm the
accreditations of exercise professionals holding NCCA-accredited certifications
• Integrate programs offered by NCCA-accredited health coaches into regular service
offerings
• Bring news of the expanding role of exercise professionals as healthcare professionals
to the community including schools, parks and recreation facilities, churches and
workplaces
• Commit to joining ACE in this paradigm shift. Commit to recalibrating how the industry
thinks about the services that it offers and the ways that it offers them, so that it can
positively impact vastly more lives and thrive by doing so.
© 2014 ACE

36. © 2014 ACE