The health and wellness influencer community is varied and spans across a number of specialised areas. Unfortunately, standardised qualifications are the exception not the rule in this sector. There are many differences of opinion on what warrants qualification across the fields of nutrition, fitness and wellbeing.
We also are acutely aware of the differing levels of privilege and access different groups of people are exposed to and do not believe that the approach with this register is to penalise those who are not able to access higher education systems. The internet has democratised who has consumer influence, however, we believe that all content creators need to work to an industry standard in regards to health and wellness information.
Due to the disparity across the sector, we choose to define an influencer as follows: ‘An influencer is an individual who has the power to affect purchase and health decisions of others because of his/her authority, knowledge, position or relationship with his/her audience. Due to their ability to alter their audiences decision making, influencers often receive remuneration (financial or otherwise) directly linked to content production. Influencers include, but are not limited to social media personalities, health bloggers and health writers.’
The focus for us is to ensure that all influencers, whatever their background or education level, are working to high standards when it comes to the principles of information sharing and ensuring that they stay within the remit of the expertise (or lack thereof).