Ferenc Bojan Young Investigators Award
Since 1997, EUPHA has installed a Ferenc Bojan lecture/award in memory of the EUPHA president who tragically died from a car accident in Hungary in February 1997.
Ferenc Bojan qualified in medicine from Debrecen, in eastern part of Hungary in 1970 and spent his early professional career in the academic department of hygiene in Debrecen. In 1989 he moved to the Department of Social Medicine, as its head and rapidly recognized the need to address the problems of chronic underfunding and the failure to adopt modern approaches to public health. These had to be tackled, as he saw his highest priority as producing a critical mass of highly trained professionals who could assess health needs and develop and implement healthy public policies.
He strove to ensure that Hungary was integrated into the wider European public health community, taking the Hungarian Society for Public Health into EUPHA and subsequently being elected as EUPHA president. Ferenc Bojan used his period in office to support the expansion of EUPHA to neighbouring countries. Throughout the 1990s, he was an inspiration to and gave much support to those in other parts of this region.
In order to continue the legacy of Ferenc Bojan, the EUPHA Executive Council decided in 1997 to annually dedicate one session for Central and Eastern European health issues called the 'Ferenc Bojan Memorial Lecture'. This was changed in 2007 to the 'Ferenc Bojan Abstract Award' for the highest scoring abstract from a Central and Eastern European country. As it was quickly clear that abstracts from that region do not differ from (or even score higher than) abstracts from other countries, it has been transformed in a conference session entitled 'Ferenc Bojan Young Investigators Award'. Here the five highest scoring abstracts from young professionals (under 30 years) are invited to present their abstract to a small committee. The committee combines abstract with presentation and the winner of the Ferenc Bojan award is announced in the closing session.
The winner is awarded a certificate and waiver of registration fees for the next EPH Conference.