Wellness professionals with four or more years of full-time experience in wellness programming across two or more employers are eligible to pursue CWPC certification through our Equivalency Exam, an accelerated pathway offered by Chapman Institute. Candidates who complete the exam with a score of 70% or higher earn recognition as a Certified Wellness Program Coordinator (CWPC).
What You Receive With the Equivalency Exam
When you enroll in the CWPC Equivalency Exam, you receive:
-
Access to online CWPC training, including on-demand resources to support any skill gaps
-
A digital copy of the 220+ page CWPC course workbook, including slides and professional tools (a printed copy is available for purchase)
-
$100 off Level 2 CWPM training when the Level 2 CWPM course is purchased within 12 months of purchasing the Equivalency Exam
Exam Format
The Equivalency Exam includes:
-
40 multiple-choice questions (40 points)
-
40 true/false questions (40 points)
-
4 long-answer case study questions (40 points)
The exam is open book, progress can be saved, and participants may complete it on their own schedule. Candidates also document their professional experience as part of the evaluation. Those who meet the expected experience level and achieve a score of 70% or higher successfully earn the CWPC designation.
About the CWPC Program
The Certified Wellness Program Coordinator (CWPC) is the foundational and most widely completed WellCert certification. For professionals who manage wellness as part of a broader role, Level 1 provides the practical skills needed to maximize impact. For those working in wellness full-time, CWPC serves as the essential foundation for advancement to Level 2 – Certified Wellness Program Manager (CWPM).
Level 1 CWPC training is highly practical and results-focused. Through two days of structured content, real-world case studies, and applied materials, participants are prepared to confidently deliver effective wellness programs.
Watch a video on WellCert and Level 1:
The skills we cover in Level 1 CWPC include:
- How to build strong senior management support: This skill covers the process for crafting rationales for wellness that fit your organization. It provides a summary of ROI expectations found in scientific literature, and how to use this evidence when speaking with C-level leaders. It also covers biases commonly held by managers that need to be overcome.
- How to assess your employees’ wellness needs: This skill covers the top prevention targets most commonly included in wellness programming, and the interventions that address them. It also identifies and details how to use many data sources that can inform your wellness needs assessment.
- How to use a Health Risk Assessment (HRA): As a continuation of the needs assessment and planning topics, this skill covers the understanding of the potential of the HRA, the evolution of HRAs, as well as their key role in comprehensive wellness programming. It also provides practical tips on how to use HRA data, and how to select HRA vendors.
- How to set your wellness strategy: This skill covers key program models and how to choose the right one for your organization, depending on your goals and needs. The skill also provides guidance on what stakeholders should be involved in setting the direction of your programs.
- How to design your organizational infrastructure: This skill covers key topics like program staffing, objectives and metrics, working with stakeholders and wellness champions. It provides key checklists that will help you build your program launch plan, budget, and select vendors and the program’s infrastructure.
- How to design your technology infrastructure: This skill helps wellness program staff understand how key technology fits together to deliver effective programming. It outlines data flow between components, and helps wellness people argue for technology investment.
- How to design effective wellness communications: This skill distills marketing best practices and pitfalls. It outlines the core components of an effective employee communications plan, while also digging into key communications channels like email. It also provides creative ideas you can use to spice up your wellness communications.
- How to design your health management process: This skill covers the levels of targeting and personalization needed to provide targeted interventions. It also outlines the various ways to feedback personal health metrics to individuals to provide motivation for change.
- How to design group activities: This skill provides helpful templates and creative ideas for group programming. It provides participation strategies and rationales for selling investment in group activities to your leadership.
- How to create a supportive environment for wellness: This skill lays out ways an organization demonstrates or sabotages its commitment to wellness. It covers key policies, physical environment factors, management messaging, value dynamics and other strategies that must be aligned in order to create a real culture of wellness.
- How to design onsite programming: This skill covers major event-planning pitfalls and considerations when providing onsite programming. It covers a range of key planning questions applied to eight common onsite wellness activities.
- How to perform a simple evaluation of your program: This skill provides an overview of the most important methodologies used to measure the results of wellness programs. It provides evaluation strategies, methodological issues to address, and nine suggested evaluation modules that answer common senior management questions. The range of concerns here vary from simple survey approaches to complex HRA matched cohort analysis.
Each participant receives a soft copy of the 220+ page Course Workbook that includes slides, exercises, resources and access to the full 16+ hours of recorded instruction online.
Upon completion of the course, exercises, and course evaluation, Chapman Institute formally confers the certification and adds your name to our online registry. WellCert grads must complete two continuing education online modules on the Chapman Institute website each year to maintain their certification in active status.
Learn more about WellCert here. Experienced wellness professionals can test past Level 1. Click here for more details.
