The External Reference Group

Hej främling is a national non-profit organization dedicated to fostering meaningful connections between people through open and free health‑promoting activities. With a focus on culture, sports, and outdoor recreation, the organization operates in 60 locations across Sweden and welcomes close to 50,000 participant visits each year.

Driven by the belief that well‑being and belonging should be accessible to all, Hej främling works toward the vision of a society where everyone feels good and everyone has a place.

Fenomenala is an organization committed to ensuring that no child, young person, or adult falls through the gaps of today’s societal systems. Motivated by the growing number of individuals who experience marginalization and exclusion, she serves on the reference group to help shape meaningful solutions.

Anna Tuomas work is driven by the conviction that public health initiatives must be designed and implemented in ways that lead to real, measurable impact. By contributing her perspective and expertise, she aims to advance efforts that promote greater health equity and ensure that more people receive the support they need to thrive.

Anna has experience in building and developing the organization, which demonstrates how important and rewarding it is when civil society, the public sector, and academia collaborate. We can offer each other knowledge and feedback—an exchange that can be crucial for the quality of all parties involved.

Public Health Agency of Sweden is the unit for mental health and suicide prevention. Saras work covers a broad range of public health issues, and she focuses on bridging research and practice to make scientific knowledge as useful and applicable as possible.

When it comes to health equity, Sara works with it at every stage from how it can be measured at the national level, to how they can make the results accessible, and what can be done to reduce health inequalities at different levels of society. This makes this work highly meaningful to Sara, and she hopes to contribute with her experience.

The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SKR) is a membership organization representing all municipalities and regions in Sweden. Tyras role involves supporting municipalities and regions in their efforts to promote health and prevent ill‑health among children and young people, with health equity as the central guiding principle.

A key focus of her work is strengthening the conditions for collaboration between municipalities and regions, between different services, across professions, and importantly, between services and the target groups themselves. No single part of the system can accomplish everything on its own, and the collective capacity of various welfare actors is immense. However, in a complex system with many different needs, conditions, governance signals, priorities, laws, organizational structures, and cultures, it is not always easy to move from words to action.

At SKR, together with the members, national agencies, and other partners, Tyra works daily with issues related to the implementation of public health initiatives in one form or another. She looks forward to deepening her understanding of these questions through the research program and the reference group, and hopes to contribute with knowledge and experience from local, regional, and national levels.

Rinkeby Folkets Hus is a community center that offers various activities and support for residents in the area. Fardosas background is in biomedical analysis, where she previously worked in laboratory research and diagnostics. Fardosa is passionate about creating a place where people can meet, exchange experiences, and strengthen their opportunities in society.

Margareta has collaborated with a wide range of organizations with a focus on public health and physical activity. She has experience of and take part in various projects, involving both planning and hands‑on participation in several participant groups, including people from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, newly arrived migrants, and individuals with disabilities, among others. In this project, Margareta hopes to contribute with experience from more practical, hands‑on work and cross‑organizational collaboration.

Mattias has a particular responsibility for safety and strategic neighbourhood development. His work primarily focuses on creating the conditions for safety through factors such as trust and economic conditions. He works with the prerequisites for safety and how these are unevenly distributed across the municipality.

Mattias has held this role with this assignment since 2017. From 2021, he has also spent half of his time as a municipal doctoral candidate, conducting research on municipal innovation capacity with a focus on management levels within the municipality. He earned his PhD at Mälardalen University in October 2025. Since then, he has returned to a full-time role as a municipal strategist, combined with a smaller position as an affiliated researcher at Mälardalen University within a research environment known as RoC (Research on Collaboration).

Fredrik’s role is to coordinate work on ANDTS issues, with a focus on developing a shared and preventive approach and on implementing the national ANDTS strategy at the local level. He also supports the municipal group in broader public health matters, where mental health and suicide prevention are key perspectives, as well as issues related to demographic developments and an ageing population. The work aims to create conditions that reduce ill health and inequality, strengthen well-being, and preserve health and independence.