Dunn is known as the "father" of the wellness movement. He distinguished between good health—not being ill—and what he termed
high-level wellness, which he defined as "a condition of change in which the individual moves forward, climbing toward a higher potential of functioning". He introduced the concept in a series of twenty-nine lectures at the
Unitarian Church in
Arlington County, Virginia in the late 1950s, which provided the basis for his book,
High Level Wellness, published in 1961. The book was reissued in a number of editions but did not have a great deal of immediate impact. It did, however, come into the hands of a number of the future leaders of the wellness and
holistic health movement that bloomed more than a decade later, such as Don B. Ardell,
Robert Russell,
John Travis, and
Elizabeth Neilson. Four events in the mid-1970s broadened the impact of Dunn's ideas. First,
John Travis opened the first US wellness center (Mill Valley, CA, 1975). This center and other organizations were then described in Don Ardell's 1977 book, using Dunn's title (giving Dunn due credit for his origination of the title and concept). Then Elizabeth Neilson founded the journal
Health Values: Achieving High-Level Wellness (renamed the
American Journal of Health Promotion in 1996), which was dedicated to Dunn and reprinted one of his papers in its first edition. Lastly, the publisher of
Health Values, Charles B. Slack, Inc., published a reprint edition of Dunn's
High-Level Wellness that achieved a wider distribution and impact. In 2014, John Travis discovered that Dunn had 3 sons, the last of whom had recently died. However, his wife was still alive. John interviewed her for his "An Oral History of Wellness" project (HELP Proper link needed to the interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5AuyI8zt6g), learning much about Halbert's personal life. ==References==