The Swedish Foundation for Functional Medicine
The Swedish Foundation for Functional Medicine is a not-for-profit organisation established in 2020.
Our mission is to help enhance the quality of healthcare for chronic conditions through the financing of research projects and educational initiatives in the field of functional medicine in the Nordic countries.
Key Pillars:
- Research focused on patient outcomes by comparing costs of functional medicine care with conventional care using standardized evaluation tools;
- Initiatives and activities focusing on the best way to obtain feedback on personalized multimodal lifestyle interventions at group and individual levels;
- Development of measurements indicating the effectiveness of personalized multimodal lifestyle interventions from a welfare perspective.
Today, almost half of the Swedish population suffers from chronic disease, and approximately 80 percent of the national healthcare spending is devoted to treating these patients.
In parallel with this development, interest in the functional medicine model is growing in the Nordic countries, and more data is needed to assess how this lifestyle-based, individualized type of healthcare could be adapted to Swedish and Nordic conditions.
In May 2016 we initiated the first clinical research trial on personalized lifestyle medicine in Sweden, financed by the three major Swedish insurance companies of EuroAccident, Länsförsäkringar, and Skandia, and led by professor Kerstin Brismar.
The study was a pilot designed to test the feasibility and acceptability of a personalized intervention program of lifestyle changes in patients with treatment-resistant debilitating primary hypothyroidism.
Our next research project is to test whether personalized lifestyle medicine based on the functional medicine model has a clinical effect on the treatment of refractory irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
Board of Directors
Chair: Siwert Gårdestig
Currently a consultant and senior advisor in the healthcare and government sectors, Siwert Gårdestig has held the position of Hospital Director at Södersjukhuset, one of the largest hospitals in Stockholm, and at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, as well as Programme Director and Insurance Director at the Swedish National Social Insurance Agency.
Executive Director: Anna Tillberg
Anna Tillberg is a former healthcare contractor and a business graduate. She ran a successful healthcare center in the City of Stockholm between 1993 and 2008 before she moved into project management and consulting. She is also trained in functional, nutritional and herbal medicine.
Director: Sanna Törsleff Berglund
Sanna Törsleff Berglund is a psychologist and nutritional therapist and has applied the functional medicine model in her practice since 2006. Today she serves as a consultant to nutritional therapists and the health food sector and is involved in clinical functional medicine research.
Director: Peter Martin
Peter Martin is a medical doctor specializing in primary care and functional medicine. He has a PhD in CNS pharmacology and a background in pharmaceutical research with Nobel laureate Arvid Carlsson. Peter is the founder and director of FunMed.se, the largest medical practice of functional medicine in Sweden.
Director: Helene Sandström
Helene Sandström is a science journalist and translator with extensive experience in the fields of health, functional medicine and nutrition. She also serves as press officer for the non-profit organization Nordic Nutrition Council, which acts as a bridge between nutrition research and the food sector.