Future of Russia Foundation
The Future of Russian Foundation (FOR) is the only U.S. charitable foundation created for and solely committed to the mission of modernizing the Russian system for delivery of health care to women of reproductive age and infants, addressing Russia’s declining population, identified in then-President Putin’s inaugural address as Russia’s “greatest crisis.” Funded initially by the U.S. private sector ($3 m. in seed money from the family of Founder and Chairman Thomas J. Murray, $2 m. equipment gift from the employees of the General Electric Company through its Elfin Foundation, continuing support from the Coca Cola Company, and on-going leadership and support from the Atlanta Rotary Club), US government support has come from the Open World Leadership Program at the Library of Congress, now in its third year partnering with FOR, and in 2004, USAID’s first health care grant ($500,000) in Russia under its Global Development Alliance Program.
FOR operates by intense collaboration between American health care professionals and their Russian counterparts on the principle that healthy young women have healthy pregnancies, and that healthy mothers give birth to healthy babies. Training of perinatal professionals at all levels has occurred through bi-lateral exchanges, Russian teams consisting of neonatalogists, pediatricians, obstetricians, hospital administrators, midwives, and nurses spending a week each year in Atlanta, Georgia, working with American professionals at Emory University Medical School, the World Health Organization/Collaborating Center for Reproductive Health (WHO/CC/RH), and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with reciprocal visits of American teams to Balashikha, under the direction of Dr. Alfred W. Brann, Jr., FOR Medical Director and Director of the WHO/CC/RH.
In the past eight years FOR has accomplished the first phase of its mission: the creation of a modern regional pre- and perinatal health care delivery system, including primary, secondary, and tertiary care, in the Moscow Oblast, the region surrounding the city of Moscow (population 7 ½ million, approximately 50 birthing sites and 75,000 live births in 2008), to serve as the model for rollout throughout the Russian Federation. This model modern regional perinatal health care facility and delivery system is known as the Balashikha Project, after the site of the Moscow Regional Perinatal Center (MRPC). 
In October 2007 then First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, after visiting the MPRC in Balashikha, recognized the Balashikha Project on national television as the model to be followed for perinatal health care modernization throughout Russia. The next phase of FOR’s mission is responding to now President Medvedev through the rollout of the Balashikha model throughout the Russian Federation.
In July 2009, FOR’s Medical Director, Dr. Alfred W. Brann, Jr., represented the FOR at the Civil Society Summit (CSS) in Moscow, held in parallel with the Presidential Summit of Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev, where the accomplishments of the Balashikha Project were specifically cited as needing “scale-up of existing efforts.”
FOR is managed on private sector principles, operating with unmatched efficiency and has received the strongest professional recognition from its Russian partners: an increased call for greater collaboration.
