Dr Péter Kricsfalvi, former Commissioner for Public Health of the Ministry of Welfare, founded the Foundation. Decisions related to the strategy of the Foundation are made by a Board of Trustees (BoT) of five. The BoT regularly supervises the financial affairs and professional work of the Foundation’s staff.
BoT is led by President Károly Ambrus, former Head of Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and lecturer of the College of Finance and Accounting.
The Vice-President is Dr Lajos Döbrõssy, MD, former Regional Adviser for Cancer to the WHO’s Regional Office for Europe, consultant to the World Bank and Hungarian Ministry of Health.
The Secretary of the Foundation is Dr Tibor Szilágyi, MD, former scientific co-ordinator of the Tobacco and Alcohol Policy Development Project, previously consultant to the World Bank and Hungarian Ministry of Health, former Hungarian National Counterpart for the Action Plan for a Tobacco-Free Europe.
Two further members of the BoT are Dr. Magdolna Méhész, family doctor and special expertise in workplace health care and Gabriella Fon, actress and journalist.
The number of members of BoT and the persons who can undertake these
responsibilities must be reconsidered according to the new concepts and
functions of the Foundation.
Some of them will need an international participation in their leadership. These are: tobacco control research centre, international network for providing better health for Romas, introducing and developing methods of health impact assessment in CCEE. Specific international task forces, to ensure active participation of all involved countries will provide these functions with relevance to the health of the regions’ population. International scientific advisory committees will be organised to help the activities of the task forces.
The capacities will be developed by the Foundation's permanent expert team. The BoT will set out goals and monitor the task forces' activities and evaluate and supervise the achievements.
The expert team of the Foundation will consist of a limited number (at
the beginning 1 and 1/2 full-time-equivalent) employee. They must have
experience in planning and implementation of health development programmes.
Their education and management skills should make possible the management
of the Foundation’s activities at the highest attainable levels. The work
of expert team must be facilitated by an administrator/co-ordinator.
The large-scale health development projects will be outsourced in a formal application system supervised by the BoT. The basic guiding values and principles of the Foundation's activities are the transparency and effectiveness. The Foundation will be accountable towards its donors concerning the content of programmes and the appropriateness of utilisation of funds.
The quality of outsourced programmes will be supervised by the Foundation
as well. The frame of quality assurance for health promotion programmes
is developed by the permanent staff and approved by the BoT.
The Board will be convened at least once a year by the BoT. Additional
meetings must be held if needed; the Foundation’s expert team should indicate
points when and should recommend to the BoT the need to convene the IAB
as often as it seems necessary for ensuring a continuous high professional
standard for all the Foundation’s activities.
The Foundation’s key principles include strategic thinking and transparency of processes/programmes and resource allocation.
The internal professional team will be made responsible for raising international resources not for the entire strategy of the Foundation but for Action Plans based on the concepts laid down in this document. Networking, creating new partnerships and collaboration with international organisations may help to develop twin programs and to adopt best international practice in Hungary.
After a few years of functioning and acceptance of the Foundation in
and outside the country the internal professional team will try to advise
decision makers to introduce tools providing long-term financing for the
involvement of the civil sector, including the Foundation, in health development.
When the Foundation’s strategy is passed by the BoT, the internal staff and the communication expert must take up the responsibility for developing the communication strategy. This will be submitted and debated by the BoT as well.
In the communication strategy special attention must be paid for addressing as large target audience as requested by the program/project in question or by the importance and relevance of information. The Foundation’s activities and Hungarian health development in general must be held at the highest attainable level in the Hungarian media to ensure continuous information of people and transparency, which is one of the key principles of the Foundation.
Other key target groups must be: health professionals, including health promoters, research institutions, decision makers working at different levels of state administration, non-traditional sectors for health and the private sector and media representatives themselves.
The internal staff of the Foundation and the communication expert must
ensure the adequate packaging of information and must get it to the target
audience.