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Donald B. Ardell has been one of the leading figures in the wellness movement for three decades. The author of numerous books and articles on wellness he has also been a popular speaker at many conferences on health and wellness.
He earned his bachelors degree in sociology in 1963 from George Washington University, where he also met Janice Larkins, his future wife. He earned a Master of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1965 and subsequently attended Stanford University Business School\'s Senior Executive Program in 1973. He was awarded his doctorate in health and public policy in 1977 by Union Institute and University.
In 1974 he wrote a series of articles in the American Journal of Health Planning that described how health planning could be reoriented from regulating hospital expansions to promoting healthy lifestyles. He reports that before the essential demise of health planning in the late 70\'s, one-third of the more than two-hundred areawide health planning agencies had adopted a goal of promoting wellness
In 1977 he published High Level Wellness: An Alternative to Doctors, Drugs, and Disease, borrowing the concept and title High Level Wellness from Halbert L. Dunn. Ardell\'s book was a best-seller, published initially by Rodale Press and then in numerous reprint editions by Bantam Books and Ten-Speed Press. He later wrote a half dozen additional wellness books, including 14 Days to a Wellness Lifestyle and Die Healthy. He was one of ten persons given the Healthy America Fitness Leaders Award in 1991 by the President\'s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, the Allstate Insurance Company and the U.S. Jaycees.
He was Associate Professor of urban planning at the University of Central Florida where he was founder and Director of that university\'s Campus Wellness Center and its Wellness Institute. Since 1984 he has been the publisher of The Ardell Wellness Report as well as a weekly electronic newsletter.
He has also earned distinction as an athlete. He is considered one of the fastest runners in the world in his age class. He is also an All-American triathlete and duathlete, winning both the Duathlon National Championship and the National Triathlon Championship in 2004.
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