Wave Launches Clinical Innovation Lab to Extend Coach-Delivered Care to Underserved Populations
New program establishes a disciplined process for expanding coaching into complex clinical areas, with early pilots focused on expanding our neurodiversity coverage to include ARFID across the lifespan
[PALO ALTO, June 2, 2026] – Wave, a mental health platform delivering coaching-led care to health plan and employer populations, today announced the launch of its Clinical Innovation Lab: a structured program for bringing new and underserved populations into evidence-based coach-delivered care, while maintaining the outcomes standards the model is built on.
The Lab was designed to answer a question the field hasn't resolved: which clinical populations can coaching responsibly reach, and what does it take to get there? Wave's answer is a four-stage process: clinical need identification, protocol piloting, outcomes review, and workforce dissemination. No new area of care reaches Wave's coaches without completing all four.
Wave has long served neurodivergent individuals and their families, through Pathways covering neurodiversity, caregiving, family dynamics, and support for parents of children with autism and ADHD. The Innovation Lab's current pilots extend that work further. Two ARFID tracks are in active development: one for adults managing avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, and one for parents of children with picky eating and ARFID. The need for both is well supported by the literature. Research from a large autism cohort suggests approximately 21% of autistic individuals are at risk for ARFID, and children with ARFID are 14 times more likely to have autism and 9 times more likely to have ADHD than children without it. These families are navigating significant complexity, and structured support is rarely available to them. Both tracks are moving through the Lab's four-stage review process before any broader deployment.
The Lab is building the evidence base for a simple proposition: that coaching, when structured, measurement-based, and delivered by credentialed coaches, can reach people digital mental health has historically not served well and produce real outcomes when it does. The ARFID pilots represent two populations where clinical need is high and access through traditional channels is low. They are the starting point, not the scope.
Wave's coaches are National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coaches, supervised within a tiered clinical structure overseen by Wave Founder and Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford Sarah Adler, Psy.D. The Lab operates within that same structure: protocols are developed under clinical oversight, piloted to produce outcomes data, and only reach the broader workforce once they have cleared the full four-stage process.
"Coaching can reach people the mental health system has left behind, but only if the clinical model is disciplined enough to earn that," said Dr. Sarah Adler, Founder and CEO of Wave. "The Innovation Lab is how we extend responsibly."
Wave serves employer and health plan populations today through 30+ evidence-based Pathways, and is building toward broader population coverage across Medicare Advantage and Medicaid. The Clinical Innovation Lab is how Wave keeps expanding who those Pathways can reach.
Health plan and employer partners can learn more at wavelife.io/health-plans or reach Wave's partnerships team at partners@wavelife.io.
About Wave Wave is a coaching-led mental health platform that pairs every member with a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, tracks outcomes using validated instruments throughout the engagement, and delivers between-session support through 30+ Pathways and 1,000+ evidence-based content interventions. Wave's outcomes research is published in JMIR Formative Research (Pickover & Adler, 2025). Learn more at wavelife.io or read about our coaching model.
Contact partners@wavelife.io