Halbert L. Dunn

But in the 1950s, wellness came to refer to the positive quality of being in good physical, mental, and spiritual health.

And I learned from this great article by Ben Zimmer in the New York Times Magazine, published in 2010, that one of the big proponents of this kind of wellness, these wellness programs and centers, was Halbert L. Dunn, who was the chief of the National Office of Vital Statistics, which is part of the CDC.

And he gave talks about it and wrote about it in the 1950s.

And starting in the 1970s, we see an uptick when we look at Google Books in the use of wellness.