Bringing wellness innovations to the world with WAI

In a $1.5 trillion industry where every other company seems to want to sell you a "wellness" product or service, who can you trust? That's the question the Wellness Access Institute (WAI) wants to answer, in part to help customers make informed decisions, but also to support companies that bring truly useful products to market.

Founded earlier this year by Greg Macpherson and Warren Liu, WAI's goal is to help industry, its regulators, and consumers better understand what a focus on wellness could accomplish. Despite clear benefits to people's health — ultimately, the ability to live longer — policymakers aren't providing the broad support the wellness sector needs, WAI argues. In particular, too many obstacles stand in the way of innovation.

"First, there is the question of trust and transparency in the industry: how to create a stronger bond between science and the buyer," says Liu. “Next, we want to tackle the speed of innovation and accessibility for ordinary people. Real solutions to today's health and wellness issues can be accelerated by addressing these challenges and creating frameworks of education and knowledge access to support health and wellness."< /p>

WAI plans to create an industry body, funded by, but operating independently of, the wellness industry. It would pursue initiatives such as product certifications properly backed by scientific evidence and real-world evidence, helping companies build trust. It also plans to launch a WAI accelerator program, connecting industry innovators and entrepreneurs with leaders in areas such as supply chain, marketing and R&D.

The organization will operate as a nonprofit, Liu says, self-funding over time through membership fees, certification and other services. Any excess cash generated will be reinvested in the organization and its programs.

Both Macpherson and Liu have extensive experience working in the areas of wellness and preventative health, and previously collaborated on a brand of supplements designed to help people manage the aging process. Building this brand required overcoming a number of frustrating challenges, which the duo found to be common when they spoke to others in the industry.

“Revolutionary innovations get stuck in the lab,” says Liu. "Genuine solutions don't reach the people who stand to benefit from them quickly enough, and sometimes not at all. And even when the products are on the market, they are sometimes too expensive or not widely available."

Macpherson says WAI can help organizations solve some of these bottlenecks, to the benefit of all. “An urgent paradigm shift is needed if we are to sustainably support an aging population and improve our collective and individual health as we age,” he says. "WAI aims to accelerate our understanding of and access to wellness and wellness innovation in a way that is trusted and accessible to everyone."

To begin to achieve these goals, WAI has appointed an advisory board comprised of eight prominent wellness leaders. They include Aubrey Levitt, founder of microbiome startup Postbiotics Plus, Dr. Matt Yousefzadeh, a prolific wellness contributor to scientific publications, and Michael Heinam, who works on patent applications and contracts with leading universities.

"It's not just businessmen and scientists who are trying to create new products to sell," Liu adds. “This is an open dialogue and vision-setting program involving people at every step of the journey; it starts with making knowledge of key wellness factors accessible to everyone.”

WAI points to fundamental misunderstandings among consumers, accumulated over many years, as evidence of the need for an organization to promote education and awareness. The idea of ​​"eating your greens", for example, is based on an outdated campaign and neglects fruits and vegetables of different colors.

Ultimately, the founders of WAI believe that if they can help innovators make new, high-quality products available faster and provide consumers with the help and understanding to recognize these products, the potential overall is to achieve better health outcomes. "The benefits of health and longevity programs have never been clearer," says Liu.