The Sage Foundation for Health Humanitarian Award

 2007 Red Ball Honors Mrs. Sherry Lund

 The Sage Foundation for Health Humanitarian Award honors individuals in the Valley of the Sun who demonstrate strong leadership in philanthropy and/or community service, particularly in the healthcare sector. The Sage Foundation is committed to providing care for the medically underserved, and the recipient of this award goes above and beyond in his/her contributions to this same mission.

In honor of her commitment to Naturopathic Medicine, we are proud to name Mrs. Sherry Lund as recipient of the 2007 Sage Foundation for Health Humanitarian Award. “It’s not about anything other than helping people and helping children…I feel like I’m on a mission,” said Lund recently of her involvement with the Sage Foundation.

Perhaps the most instrumental figure in the short but bright history of the Red Ball has been Lund. As the former President of the Sage Foundation for Health and a former member of the Board of Trustees of the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, Lund has stood firmly behind the cause of Naturopathic Medicine, particularly serving underprivileged populations through support of the Sage Foundation for Health.

 As a prominent benefactor in the Valley, Lund has worked as a philanthropist for more than 30 years. “I’ve always been involved with things to do with children,” said Lund, and with all sorts of organizations from “hotlines for pregnant teens to the Scottsdale Jaycees to the Boys and Girls Club.”

“I was raised on Naturopathic Medicine,” Lund explained. “I learned about Southwest College about five years ago when I was involved in a case with a little boy at Phoenix Children’s Hospital…Dr. Paul Mittman contacted me to see if there was anything they could do to help with the situation.” Upon learning that there was a Naturopathic college in Tempe, Lund immediately became interested helping the school. Soon after being invited to join the College’s Board of Trustees, she learned of the Sage Foundation for Health and its good works, and dove into assisting.  

 Lund has consistently been an advocate for alternative and complementary medicines, and especially so since Victoria Lund’s battle with liver failure in 2002 (Victoria was Lund’s step-daughter). While Victoria eventually lost her fight, her illness and death were eased with the help of Naturopathic physicians. Lund has stated that she is a strong believer in the collaboration of Naturopathic and allopathic treatments and her involvement with SCNM and Sage was an extension of those beliefs.

The Red Ball was spearheaded in 2004 by Lund as a way to honor the memory of Victoria, granddaughter of Walt Disney and an active philanthropist and to support the efforts of the Sage Foundation. A foundation created in Victoria’s name – The Victoria Lund Foundation – made assisting the works of SCNM a priority by extending its first grant to provide funding for the SCNM extended site at Hamilton Elementary School.     

Lund is now moving on from her position as President of the Sage Foundation for Health to join the board of the Wellcare Foundation, “To see to it that we have clinics elsewhere, like we do at Hamilton,” and to focus her attentions on the development of the Celebration Center for Integrated Healing, a holistic facility slated to go up adjacent to a new hospital in Gilbert, Ariz. The hope for this proximity between an allopathic and Naturopathic facility is the integration of the methods resulting in greater patient care. “That’s my goal, to have a completely unique center where people can come for healing…to have naturopaths and medical doctors working together.”