Background
Responsibility for the provision, the extent and quality of health
related services in the Austrian health sector is shared by the
national Ministry of Health, provincial governments, the professional
associations and the health insurance funds. The latter have a legal
obligation to provide prevention and health promotion services in
addition to curative services to their clients, who represent more than
95% of the Austrian population. As a result of their preventive
strategy they do offer national programs and activities like general
health screening, cervical cancer screening and other medically
oriented prevention programs. However, historically health promotion
services and programs with an orientation along the principles of the
Ottawa Charter were developed and carried out by small associations and
initiatives which act on a provincial and local level catering for the
needs of people in their living and working environments. Those
programs received little structural and financial help from the
insurance funds.
To change this situation “Fonds Gesundes Österreich” was founded in
1998 on the basis of a law specially passed to enable its creation.
Literally translated the organization’s name means “Fund for a Healthy
Austria”. Its abbreviation is “FGÖ”. Effective from August 1st 2006 the
FGÖ is a subsiduary of the Gesundheit Österreich GmbH (Health Austria
Ltd) – a company totally owned by the Government of the Republic of
Austria.
Legal mandate / basis
Health Promotion Act of 1998
The FGÖ was established in 1998 and was entrusted in that same year
with the implementation of the Health Promotion Act, Federal Law
Gazette No. 51/1998. For this purpose, the federal ministry in charge
of health makes available € 7.25 million in funding from fiscal
adjustments. This federal law does not pertain to measures and
initiatives falling within the scope of responsibility of the legal
social insurance system or based on other legal provisions.
The Health Promotion Act (1998) adopts the holistic concept of health set forth in the Ottawa Charter (WHO) and covers
1. Measures and initiatives for maintaining, promoting and improving public health and
2. Education and information on preventable diseases and on emotional, mental and social determinants of health.
It follows, then, that FGÖ's scope of action takes in the promotion of
practical and scientific projects, the creation of structures for
health promotion, the provision and support of initial and continuing
training and education offerings, information and public education, as
well as the establishment of Austria-wide and international health
promotion networks.
Mission
Mission Statement
The Fonds Gesundes Österreich (Fund for a Healthy Austria, referred to
as "the FGÖ") wants to help make the various spheres of life and
lifestyles of people in Austria healthier. Wherever people in Austria
live, love, learn, work, reside and play, the FGÖ wants to help create
living conditions that increasingly promote health. The "healthy
decision" should be the obvious decision an individual makes in
whatever environment he or she lives. In doing so, the FGÖ strives to
eliminate any socially related differences in people's chances for
health and in their utilization of health promotion activities and
measures. To further the spread of new ways of thinking and acting
which promote health and to make them part of people's everyday lives,
these efforts must go beyond individuals to include also the social
structures in which they live. This will give rise to an interplay
between individual, group and society which allows new, binding
attitudes and behaviors for evaluating and creating health-promoting
spheres of everday life.
With a variety of measures, activities, and cooperative projects, the
FGÖ intends to identify the human and environmental conditions that
determine health. Once it has done so, it will bring its influence to
bear to enable the children, women and men who live in Austria to
optimize their health potential in the sense of biological,
psychological and social well-being.
The FGÖ aspires to activate processes and create structures to assist
people in developing and continuously expanding the aspects of their
personalities that strengthen their coping resources and living
environments that promote health.
Goals and objectives
Goals of the FGÖ
Our goal is to raise public awareness about health and to support
and create healthy living conditions and lifestyles: To do so and to
maintain and improve the health and well-being of as many people in
Austria as possible, Fonds Gesundes Österreich generates a variety of
ideas, initiatives, and activities aimed at conveying knowledge,
promoting projects and developing structures that promote
health. The Fonds Gesundes Österreich invests in the development
of appropriate structures and networks, in continuing education and in
support for the self-help movement as well as in information and
education relevant to health. In addition, it stages many events, key
among them the annual health promotion conferences and prevention
meetings. The latter is an important part of our work on behalf of
public health. √
Priorities
Priorities of the FGÖ
The FGÖ has set three subject priorities and three target group priorities in settings:
· Exercise
· Nutrition
· Mental and emotional health
· Children and adolescents in non-school settings
· Employees at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
· Older people in rural and urban settings
To the extent allowed by its staff and office resources, the FGÖ
intends to facilitate numerous activities and heighten public awareness
in these six priority areas. It will do so by pushing practical
projects, scientific projects and studies, by networking, setting up
structures, with PR work and political lobbying. The FGÖ will also
stimulate and coordinate the development of descriptive and explanatory
models of health-related behavior taking into account characteristics
such as age, gender, family status, education, occupation,
socioeconomic status and nationality.
These priorities are to be reflected in the annual work programs and in
events staged by the FGÖ, e.g. seminars, working groups, at conferences
and meetings, in networking, in the magazine "Gesundes Österreich" ("A
Healthy Austria), in PR and in the FGÖ Internat Homepage at www.gesundesleben.at.
Activities
Fields of Action for the FGÖ
· Promotion of numerous practical regional and grassroots
projects in health promotion aimed at achieving healthier patterns of
behavior and healthier conditions;
· Pushing of practical projects in primary prevention based on a holistic concept of health;
· Assistance in creating structures for health promotion to help achieve sustainability and durability;
· Support of application-oriented research projects and studies
on the further development of health promotion and comprehensive
primary prevention, as well as epidemiology, evaluation and quality
assurance in these fields;
· Investment in advanced and continuing training and education
for those active in health promotion and comprehensive primary
prevention with a view to increasing the quality of work in the field;
· Forging on with the networking of activists in health promotion
and comprehensive primary prevention and investment in establishing and
expanding the networks in priority areas of health promotion;
Information, education and flanking PR activities to increase
the Austrian public's awareness of health promotion, comprehensive
primary prevention and selected aspects related to health.
In these efforts, we rely on high-quality and varied projects and
programs to reach the maximum number of people having a wide range of
needs. Basically speaking, our support goes only to projects involving
total funding of more than €10,000. We are open to acting as co-funder
of practical projects, in which case we generally provide one-third to
at most two-thirds of the verified total costs. Model projects
constitute the only exception to this rule: In areas of health
promotion and primary prevention heretofore underrepresented in
projects, we can award model projects following a tender procedure. The
latter are fully financed by us. Please be aware that projects
within Austria are eligible only for funding by the Fonds Gesundes
Österreich.
Organizational structure
From 1.
August 2006 the prior independent foundation “Fonds Gesundes
Österreich” became a division of the newly - by law established -
“Gesundheit Österreich GmbH” (Health Austria Ltd). Gesundheit
Österreich GmbH is totally owned by the federal Republic of Austria.
The decision making processes and the organisational structure
concerning the work of the FGÖ remain the same as before.
The Austrian Health Promotion Foundation (FGÖ) - a Federal Agency - has
three governing bodies: the FGÖ Board, the Project Advisory Committee,
and the Administrative Office.
The FGÖ Board
The president of the board is the Minister of Health. In total the FGÖ
Board has 15 members appointed by the following institutions:
· Federal Ministry for Social Security and Generations,
· Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Culture,
· Federal Ministry for Social Security and Generations
· Federal Ministry for Social Security and Generations (Family Issues),
· Federal Ministry of Finance,
· Governor's Conference,
· Conference of Health Specialists of the Austrian Federal Provinces,
· Association of Austrian Cities and Towns,
· Association of Austrian Cities and Towns
· Austrian Chamber of Physicians,
· Austrian Chamber of Pharmacists,
· Main Association of Austrian Social Security Institutions,
· Association of Austrian Insurance Companies,
Austrian Board of Senior Citizens
The FGÖ Board has four meetings a year. Among its duties, the Board
must rule on grant applications exceeding € 72,000.00, set priorities
and determine the basic direction of the work at the FGÖ.
The Project Advisory Committee
The Project Advisory Committee has seven members. The by-laws of the
FGÖ stipulate that at least three of these appointed members must be
from Austrian university institutes.
The Administrative Office
The Administrative Office is responsible for conducting ongoing
business as instructed by the FGÖ Board. The Administrative Office
consists of the management, the health specialists and the
administrative and business staff.
Annual resources
the federal ministry in charge of health makes available € 7.25 million
in funding from fiscal adjustments. This federal law does not pertain
to measures and initiatives falling within the scope of responsibility
of the legal social insurance system or based on other legal
provisions.
Fonds Gesundes Österreich
Austrian Health Promotion Foundation
Ein Geschäftsbereich der Gesundheit Österreich GmbH.
Mariahilfer Straße 176/8
1150 Wien
Fax:+43-(0)1-895 04 00 /20
Email: gesundes.oesterreich@fgoe.org, christoph.hoerhan@fgoe.org, rainer.christ@fgoe.org
Internet: www.fgoe.org