Our WholeHealth Model
The WholeHealth Model was created in 2014 by one of our founders, Laura Sandquist DNP, as a visual framework to help patients grasp a whole-person approach rooted in integrative nursing, functional medicine, and conventional medicine. Initially a clinical tool, it soon became a teaching resource, training clinicians within major healthcare systems and internationally, and was featured in Integrative Nursing: A Whole Health Perspective (3 edn) from Oxford University Press as part of Andrew Weil's Integrative Medicine series.
The model unites the core elements of health—nutrition, movement, sleep, mind-body connection, relationships, environment, and purpose—illustrating how they interact to shape overall wellbeing. It enables practitioners to understand patients’ complete health stories, identify drivers of disease, and guide them toward balance across physical, emotional, and spiritual domains.
Originally designed for integrative advanced practice nursing, the WholeHealth Model is adaptable for all licensed healthcare practitioners. It supports a consistent, practical, and evidence-informed approach to create health.
WHOLEHEALTH PYRAMID
Our Foundational Approach Visualized
Using the Model in Clinical Assessment
The WholeHealth approach prioritizes the patient’s full health story, not just the chief complaint.
While genetics is a foundational determinate of body function expression, the assessment typically starts with a focus on digestion, nutrition, and blood sugar balance. Optimizing these foundations allows other systems to improve in turn. Practitioners identify and prioritize them using laboratory testing and other appropriate tools.
Central to the model is HPA axis regulation—when stress, sleep, or movement are off, achieving overall balance is difficult.
Thyroid function, hormone balance, and brain function appear at the top of the pyramid because dysfunction and imbalance are often driven by the structures beneath.
Relationships, environment, and community—along with purpose and spirituality—provide essential context and can present barriers or supports to health that clinical care alone can’t address.
The WholeHealth Model supports comprehensive assessment and whole-person care in any clinical setting.
PRINCIPLES SUPPORTING OUR MODEL
Principle One: Human beings are whole systems inseparable from and influenced by environments.
Principle Two: Human beings have an innate capacity for healing and wellbeing.
Principle Three: Care should be person-centered and relationship-based.
Principle Four: Nature has healing and restorative properties that contribute to health and wellbeing.
Principle Five: Practice must be informed by evidence and use a full range of conventional and integrative approaches, employing the least intensive intervention possible depending on the need and context.
Principle Six: The health and wellbeing of caregivers matters as well as those they serve.
For more on the principles supporting our WholeHealth model, see Integrative Nursing: A Whole Health Perspective (3 edn).
