Mindful Behavior Change (MBC) Group Leader Training (GLT) Certification Pathway
Open to primary care providers, mental health clinicians, community health workers, educators, and mindfulness and contemplative practitioners
Why MBC?
We at CMC recognize that there are many paths to mindfulness and compassion and many ways to formally integrate these paths into health care and our communities.
MBC builds on MBSR and MBCT using a well-established approach to cultivating mindfulness in group settings
MBC is the prototypical "warm mindfulness" approach, explicitly integrating warmth and compassion into every session
MBC is evidence-based with more than 10 peer-reviewed published manuscripts and 3 clinical trials as well as brain imaging results showing that it is effective and enhances interoceptive awareness and emotion regulation*
MBC was designed to be flexible so that it could be led sustainably in healthcare settings as insurance-reimbursable group psychotherapy or group medical visits
MBC is developed to apply mindfulness to health behavior change and/or self-management of chronic illness, which is a critical need at the heart of healthcare
Become a Certified MBC Group Leader
Who should lead MBC?
The curricula are designed to be led by primary care providers, mental health clinicians, community health workers, addiction counselors, educators, and mindfulness and contemplative practitioners, and can be tailored to the setting and community being served.
For MBC to be led as an insurance-reimbursable modality, at least one group leader should be a licensed clinician in the state where the group is offered. While the core curriculum remains consistent across different contexts, certified teachers are trained to adapt the curriculum in specific ways for groups led in healthcare settings. Group leaders who are not health care providers/licensed clinicians or are not interested in billing insurance for their groups are invited to co-lead MBC with a licensed clinician or are invited to lead MBC in the community as an educational group.
Why become certified?
The MBC Group Leader Training Certification Pathway provides clinicians and community-based group leaders support to uphold the integrity and quality of the specific intervention, and to feel confident about their leading this curriculum. The Certification pathway offers group leaders formal feedback using the Mindfulness-Based Intervention Teaching Assessment Criteria (MBI:TAC) to help grow confidence that they are delivering MBC in a way that is true to themselves, and is also true to the essence of the curriculum and is safe and effective.
We hope that health care systems will recognize the value of MBC to their institutions and patients. Since MBC can be offered as an insurance-reimbursable service, it offers institutions the potential to recover the cost of the Group Leader Training Certification Pathway through clinical revenue and potentially reductions in medical expenditures for patients with chronic illness.
Since 2014, CMC has trained 122 MBC group leaders, located around the globe:
*Mindful Behavior Change has been extensively researched through randomized control trials in healthcare settings under the label of Mindfulness Training for Primary Care (MTPC).
