Michael Sagner MD, FRSM, FRCP, FESPM

Dr. Michael Sagner MD, FRSM, FRCP, FESPM is the Director of the European Society of Preventive Medicine and was the medical director at Europe’s first University medical center section for preventive medicine and lifestyle medicine. Dr. Sagner is a member of the European Union Platform for Action on Diet, Physical Activity, and Health and a partner of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Aging. As a clinician, Dr. Sagner has spearheaded interventions in the field of endocrinology and cardiometabolic prevention such as the use of GLP1 agonists in Europe. He is the current editor-in-chief of Progress in Preventive Medicine, a peer-reviewed journal for P4 medicine--a new approach that is predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory, known as P4--and systems biology-based prevention.

He works on the convergence of systems biology and consumer-driven healthcare to transform medicine from its current reactive approach to P4 medicine, which the journal Future Medicine describes as a systems-level approach that will “will make disease care radically more cost-effective by personalizing care to each person’s unique biology and by treating the causes rather than the symptoms of the disease.” As a public health expert, he has spearheaded several international initiatives in the field of systems biology-driven preventive medicine working with governments and NGOs. One of his interests is closing the gap between clinical practice and public health to promote more effective and patient-oriented care and preventive interventions. For that, he has collaborated with many NGOs such as the World Heart Federation (WHF), the World Obesity Federation, and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he established the ‘cell to community’ approach to the prevention, which maintains that addressing lifestyle-related diseases at the individual level can have vast public health ramifications.