Peter Bergsten

Peter Bergsten trained as a medical doctor at Uppsala University. In parallel he earned his PhD. Postdoctoral studies were conducted at the National Institutes of Health and Mayo Clinics, USA, and University of Cambridge, UK. He was appointed Professor of Diabetes Research at Uppsala University in 2008. He is adjunct professor at the Academic Children’s Hospital, Uppsala since 2016. He has scientifically coordinated several international and national research projects including the “Beta-JUDO” project, financed by the European Commission, and “Turning the tide”, financed by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. He is serving as scientific evaluator for national and international funding agencies.

Bergsten’s research focusses on promotion of physical and mental health in children. In children with obesity, who are at risk of developing type 2 diabetes, he is working on cellular mechanisms that regulate the secretion of the glucose-controlling hormone insulin including how drugs, used in obesity and type 2 diabetes management, affect insulin secretion. These findings are translated into the clinical setting, where children with obesity are treated with these drugs and followed over time.

The difficulty in reverting children with obesity back to health made him start working with how children can be prevented from developing obesity. This part has developed into work where societies, “systems”, are analyzed with respect to how they can become more preventive and act on emerging problems. In this work expertise from various disciplines are required.

Bergsten has published more than 140 original articles and 15 review articles/ book chapter, which are presently cited > 400 times per year.

At SCAS, Bergsten will continue his interdisciplinary work on how environments around the child can become health-promoting, where experiences and collaborations from experts of various areas are key to a systems transformation of society towards prevention.