John W. Travis, MD, MPH, is the creator of the Wellness Inventory. He is the founder and co-director of Wellness Associates, a consulting and publishing group whose mission is to transform the culture from its current focus on authoritarianism/domination into one of partnership/cooperation.

He completed his medical degree at Tufts University and his preventive medicine residency at Johns Hopkins University. He began his career in wellness by developing one of the first computerized health risk appraisals while serving with the U.S. Public Health Service's Division of Health Services Research.

In 1975, he gave up the practice of sick-care to open the world's first wellness center (Wellness Resource Center, Mill Valley, CA). He created the Wellness Inventory (the original wellness assessment) as a whole person intake for center clients. His Wellness Energy System (represented as the 12 dimensional wellness wheel), is the whole person model upon which the Wellness Inventory is based and is even more relevant today, 40 years later. The facilitation process at the Center, co-created by Dr. Travis, was one of the forerunners of modern coaching.

His work at the Wellness Resource Center attracted national attention culminating in an appearance on "60 Minutes" with Dan Rather in 1979. In 1979 the center was transformed into a non-profit educational corporation that enabled Dr. Travis to lecture and give workshops around the world in order to facilitate other helping professionals in the techniques and processes pioneered by his staff.

His publications include the "Wellness Inventory" (Wellness Assoc. Publications, 1975, 1981, 1988); the Wellness Workbook, coauthored with Regina Ryan (Ten Speed Press, 1981, 1988, 2004); Simply Well: Choices for a Healthy Life, coauthored with Regina Ryan (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1990, 2001); Wellness For Helping Professionals, Creating Compassionate Cultures, coauthored with Meryn Callander (Wellness Assoc. Publications, 1990); A Change of Heart: The Global Wellness Inventory, coauthored with Meryn Callander (Arcus Press, 1993); and the Society of Prospective Medicine's SPM Handbook of Health Assessment Tools, with 5 co-editors (SPM Press, 1999).

He contributed to his wife's Why Dads Leave: Insights and Resources for When Partners Become Parents, a wakeup call to the culture that focuses on fostering individual and planetary wellness through changing the norms of how babies are born and treated in their early years. It describes his hypotheses of Male Postpartum Abandonment Syndrome, the cause of why so many boys are unable to be good fathers--leading to the unacknowledged epidemic of disappearing dads.

He is also a co-founder of the Alliance for Transforming the Lives of Children (aTLC.org).

The online version of the Wellness Inventory, created by WellPeople (a division of HealthWorld Online) may be accessed by individuals at www.WellPeople.com and may also be licensed by professionals and organizations).

Learn more about Dr. Travis' wellness philosophy - A New Vision of Wellness?