[Securing transplantation medicine. Duties of the German Foundation for Organ Transplantation (DSO)]. / Sicherung der Transplantationsmedizin. Aufgaben der Deutschen Stiftung Organtransplantation.

Due to a lack of confidence, the organ transplantation system in Germany is currently in a crisis. This was triggered by waiting list manipulations at four transplant centers in 2012, which led to a public debate that continues to this day and a dramatic decline in the number of post-mortem organ donations. This problem affects the 11,000 critically ill patients on the waiting list who are in urgent need of a post-mortem organ donation for their own survival. Also affected are transplantation medicine physicians and facilities whose work in organ donations is severely influenced by the resurgent discussion of brain death diagnosis and the medical and ethical criteria for the allocation of organs. Despite extensive documentation of donor/organ data, receiver data, and functional data, the necessary transparency to assess and represent the quality of transplantation medicine in Germany is not available due to systematic segregation of the information by the databases. Therefore, the joint efforts of all stakeholders are required to restore confidence in a transparent high-quality organ donation and transplantation process based on a transplant registry.

Charters and foundations: are we losing control of our public schools?

From their inception, United States public schools have been subject to reform efforts. The most recent, and perhaps the most potent, is the current effort to establish charter schools as replacements for traditional public schools. They are supposed to be the analog of private schools, providing choices to parents, financed by public funds, but operating largely free of state and local regulations. The schools are organized under charters specified by state laws and authorized by public agencies. This essay traces the development and growth of charter schools and note changes in their original mission to improve public education. It concludes with the role that very wealthy foundations play in promoting charter schools. In effect, they control public education policy without real accountability to the public.

Securing funds for health promotion: lessons from health promotion foundations based on experiences from Austria, Australia, Germany, Hungary and Switzerland.

Worldwide, countries face the challenge of securing funds for health promotion. To address this issue, some governments have established health promotion foundations, which are statutory bodies with long-term and recurrent public resources. This article draws on experiences from Austria, Australia, Germany, Hungary and Switzerland to illustrate four lessons learned from the foundation model to secure funding for health promotion. These lessons are concerned with: (i) the broad spectrum of potential revenue sources for health promotion foundations within national contexts; (ii) legislative anchoring of foundation revenues as a base for financial sustainability; (iii) co-financing as a means to increase funds and shared commitment for health promotion; (iv) complementarity of foundations to existing funding. Synthesizing the lessons, we discuss health promotion foundations in relation to wider concerns for investment in health based on the values of sustainability, solidarity and stewardship. We recommend policy-makers and researchers take notice of health promotion foundations as an alternative model for securing funds for health promotion, and appreciate their potential for integrating inter-sectoral revenue collection and inter-sectoral funding strategies. However, health promotion foundations are not a magic bullet. They also pose challenges to coordination and public sector stewardship. Therefore, health promotion foundations will need to act in concert with other governance instruments as part of a wider societal agenda for investment in health.