Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Initiative

2025 Trends

---

TREND 1: Bridging the AI Gap for an Inclusive Wellness Industry

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to revolutionize healthcare, the intersection of technology and diversity, equity, and inclusion has become a critical focus. AI-driven healthcare solutions hold immense promise, but without careful oversight, they risk perpetuating biases that disproportionately affect historically disadvantaged communities. As highlighted by Nazar in “Bias in Artificial Intelligence Algorithms and Recommendations for Mitigation,” AI systems often reflect the prejudices embedded in their training data, leading to racial and gender disparities in diagnostics and treatment. To address this, healthcare organizations are implementing equitable data collection, ethical AI guidelines, and continuous auditing to ensure fair and accurate decision-making.

Judy Gichoya, in “AI Pitfalls and What Not to Do,” warns of the dangers of relying solely on AI without human oversight. AI models lacking diversity in their training data can reinforce existing healthcare inequities, disproportionately misdiagnosing conditions or overlooking symptoms in underrepresented populations. To mitigate these risks, global wellness leaders are advocating for human-AI collaboration, ensuring that healthcare professionals work alongside AI tools rather than replacing human judgment entirely. This approach is being successfully implemented in initiatives like Kaiser Permanente’s mental health and wellness digital ecosystem, which integrates AI-driven support with culturally competent care to deliver personalized, equitable treatment.

In 2025, the wellness industry is at a pivotal moment where diversity, equity, inclusion and AI must align to create equitable health outcomes. By addressing algorithmic bias, promoting ethical AI practices, and integrating inclusive digital health solutions, the industry can harness AI’s potential while safeguarding against systemic discrimination. The future of wellness depends on ensuring that technological advancements benefit all individuals, regardless of race, gender, or socioeconomic status, reinforcing the need for inclusive, human-centered design in AI-driven healthcare.

Sources:

1. How Kaiser Permanente Created a Mental Health and Wellness Digital Ecosystem
2. A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW OF BIAS IN AI ALGORITHMS | Nusantara Hasana Journal
3. Sources of bias in artificial intelligence that perpetuate healthcare disparities—A global review – PMC
4. Bias in artificial intelligence algorithms and recommendations for mitigation | PLOS Digital Health
5. AI pitfalls and what not to do: mitigating bias in AI – PMC
6. Mitigating bias in AI at the point of care – PubMed     

TREND 2: How Wellness Industry Can Counter Emotional Tax in the Workplace

Emotional tax is the burden of feeling different at work due to gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disabilities. Employees feel constantly on guard against bias and its negative impact on wellbeing and career growth. A Catalyst report showed emotional tax was pervasive in Australia, Brazil, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

To create a thriving workplace, companies must foster an environment where everyone feels valued, heard, and supported. When companies prioritize inclusion, they not only enhance employee well-being and engagement but also drive innovation, retention, and long-term success. Organizations can achieve this by implementing bias training, creating safe spaces for dialogue, offering mentorship and sponsorship opportunities, ensuring equitable access to leadership roles, and well-rounded wellness programming.

To implement the most impactful wellness programs, they need to have a DEI lens to take the varied lived experiences, needs and barriers of employees into account. This creates relevant, meaningful and respectful programming that decreases emotional tax.

Inclusive workplaces promote a sense of belonging that can reduce anxiety among employees. Employees who feel that they can be their authentic selves at work, without fear of discrimination or bias, experience lower levels of stress and can often maintain the confidence and strength in other aspects of their life.

Sources:

1. Emotional Tax and Work Teams
2. The Role of Mental Health in DEI
3. Diversity Equity and Inclusion in Wellness Programs
4. How Does Diversity Equity and Inclusion Support Employee Wellness in the Workplace

TREND 3: Communities of Color Encode Ancestral Wisdom Through Epigenetics and Embodied Healing

Through epigenetics, we now view mental health and wellness from a different perspective, including how environmental factors, lifetime traumas, and choices shape genetics. Epigenetic principles are being integrated into somatic practices like body-based trauma release, mindfulness, and movement therapy for working with intergenerational stress and cultivating emotional resilience by mental health and wellness professionals. For instance, wellness coaches and somatic therapists take these insights to work with clients in processing a stored trauma that affects their mental and physical health. Further programs then combine ancestral healing with epigenetic awareness, providing tools to address past trauma in a way that promotes holistic well-being.

These approaches are complemented by a narrative-based medicine (NBM) that recognizes the role of personal and cultural storytelling as part of the healing process. Practitioners can help clients uncover the deeper emotional patterns around generational trauma by urging people to explore what their ancestral narratives are. These narratives help integrate epigenetic science into somatic practices and healing as a whole.

As such, inclusive research design is becoming a necessity in these efforts, to assure that studies and wellness programs are culturally and socially inclusive. Trauma-informed wellness approaches can be created that respect lived experience and ancestral knowledge if scientists and wellness professionals include historically disadvantaged groups (HDGs) communities in research and program development. It guarantees somatic experiencing, trauma-informed yoga, and lifestyle interventions are culturally relevant and equitable ensuring they are accessible to populations beyond which they were initially developed. To further support inclusive wellness, it’s beneficial to have practitioners from HDGs and ensure accessible locations, as well as flexibility in price points.

As epigenetics becomes more understood, it is inspiring new ways to combine state of the art science with cultural and ancestral tradition. This convergence of research, storytelling, and body-based practices represents a holistic path to healing, in line with the increasing need for whole-body therapies that link the physical body, emotional landscape, and ancestral stories.

Sources:

1. Ancestral Medicine’s courses
2. Integrating Ancestral Healing
3. Indigenous Wellness Framework

TREND 4: Breaking Barriers, Building Mental Wellness for Empowerment

Mental wellness is the bedrock of overall well-being across cultures, ethnicities, races, sexual orientations, gender identities, disabilities, socio economic status, ages, and religions. It influences habits, resilience, decision-making, and success across life domains. Research through the DEI Initiative shows that 83% of participants prioritize mental wellness over physical and financial wellness, reflecting a growing recognition of its foundational importance.

Mental wellness enables individuals to make informed decisions, maintain habits, and thrive physically and financially. A positive mental state fosters strength, intrinsic value, and the ability to adapt effectively. While the LGBTQIA+ community is twice as likely to seek support for mental wellness, the stigma still impacts men in this populace and people of color. Psychological symptoms of depression and anxiety are higher for historically disadvantaged groups (HDGs), though studies reflect less consistent care. This can be because of lack of access to support and/or cultural stigmas.

The steps forward to increase mental wellness include identity-based wellness businesses to counter the stigma preventing HDGs from seeking help, sliding scale options for payment, and scholarships.

Sources:

1. Research on Inclusive Wellness
2. How Does Stress Affect the Body
3. LGBTQ Communities and Mental Health
4. Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Mental Health Care

TREND 5: Regenerative Wellness: Uplifting Indigenous Voices, Ancestral Knowledge & Sustainable Tourism

Growing consumer demand to support Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) communities spurred regenerative tourism, cultural heritage, and environmental justice as core pillars in the wellness industry. Forest bathing with Indigenous leaders, farm-to-table retreats celebrating ancestral food systems, and workshops based on Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ITEK) are taking off. These offerings cultivate a deep relationship with the earth and its people, paying reverence to the fundamental interdependence of cultural heritage and ecological stewardship.

Pre-colonial traditions of deep respect for the land, biodiversity, and sustainability are at the heart of ITEK’s reciprocal relationship with the natural world. These are traditions of a balanced life, where communities flourished through living in balance with the seasons, rotational farming and seed preservation, and seasonal harvest. Many of these programs have been led by Indigenous experts who use this wisdom and show how pre-colonial practices can inform modern environmental stewardship and wellness approaches. These initiatives range from herbal medicine workshops to immersive nature retreats and show that ancestral knowledge still has a place in helping to solve today’s problems.

Indigenous and local communities are slowly but increasingly recognized as important stakeholders in breaking land for new projects, and corporations and developers are beginning to take note. Engaging Indigenous voices at the planning stage of business initiatives can ensure that the initiatives respect cultural heritage, ecological balance, and community well-being. Holding these consultations with the people and the land not only respects these people and the land but also results in more sustainable and equitable outcomes supporting the principles and perspectives of wellness and environmental justice.

This trend aims to uplift BIPOC voices, promote just land stewardship, and facilitate cultural exchange to heal historic inequities and reshape wellness tourism. It guarantees that modern wellness practices are based on multiple perspectives, respect for the interconnectedness of people and place, and regeneration, inclusivity, and precolonial ecological wisdom.

Sources:

1. Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ITEK)
2. Ancestral Wisdom & Environmental Justice
3. Indigenous Narrative through Food Activism
4. Outdoor Experiences honoring cultural heritage
5. Indigenous Wisdom Gatherings

TREND 6: Financial Wellbeing: The Rise of Holistic Wealth

Financial wellness is not just about numbers but about fostering peace of mind, alignment with values, and creating opportunities for personal and collective growth. Historically disadvantaged groups (HDGs) have shown a shift in priorities around money, emphasizing balance, security, and emotional harmony. Rather than solely on accumulating wealth, individuals seek financial stability that ensures their basic needs are met, supports a comfortable lifestyle, and allows for joy and fulfillment without stress.

Key aspects include maintaining emergency funds, living within one’s means, and cultivating financial literacy to make informed decisions. This approach fosters the freedom to pursue meaningful experiences, leisure, and self-care while enabling generosity and giving back to communities.

Emotional health is central to this trend. There is a rise in financial therapists as individuals strive to unpack scarcity mindsets, release financial stress, and develop a positive, empowering relationship with money. Viewing finances as a tool rather than a defining force, they prioritize clarity, intentional spending, and alignment with personal values.

Ultimately, this movement represents a redefinition of wealth.

Sources:

1. Research On Inclusive Wellness
2. Healthy Love and Money
3. How Financial Therapists Work
4. How Money Impacts Mental Health
5. Understanding the Mental Financial Health Connection