depends on the acceptance of what it is attempting to achieve. Informing the public about preventive human rights work therefore has to be guided by a course of action supporting this goal. Only those human rights that people know and understand can be effective. The objective of the NPM’s public relations work in the medium term is therefore to reach the persons who live in facilities and institutions, their relatives and persons of trust, as well as the staff in order to make them allies. Apart from events, which cannot be foreseen and make a reaction that creates public awareness necessary, meetings take place every two months. At these meetings a team consisting of AOB staff and commission members decides which problem areas will be highlighted on the NPM website through more detailed articles or interviews, who will participate in press conferences and which media formats will be sought out for collaboration, etc. This sometimes requires targeted preparation. For example, it was possible to participate in a television documentary series of the Austrian public broadcaster ORF called “Menschen und Mächte” (People and Powers) that dealt with a comparison between nursing homes in Scandinavia and in Austria. This gave one of the NPM commissions the opportunity to present its observations. The ORF series Hohes Haus (Parliament) and BürgerAnwalt (Advocate for the People) also showed a commission at work visiting a retirement and nursing home and highlighted the legitimate concerns of persons with disabilities who expressed them themselves. 1.3. Personnel changes in the commissions As of 1 July 2015, the tenure of three heads of commissions and of 21 commission members expired. As early as January 2015, public notices were placed in various daily newspapers in order to ensure timely appointment of new commission members. Additionally, numerous professional associations and NGOs at both the federal and the Laender level were specifically made aware of these listings to enable these positions to be filled in a gender-balanced, pluralistic, multidisciplinary and multiethnic way. As was the case in 2012, interest in participating in the OPCAT mechanism was fortunately exceptionally high. Of the 64 applicants for the three positions as heads of commissions, 14 were invited to a 45-minute interview, when they were questioned by the Human Rights Advisory Council and by the members of the AOB. New commission members The following heads of commissions were appointed: Verena Murschetz, Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedural Law, for Commission 1 (Tyrol/Vorarlberg); Gabriele Fischer, university professor and Head of Addiction Research and Therapy at the Centre for Public Health of the Medical University Vienna for Commission 3 Three new heads of commissions 9