Regional Features of the Attitude of Adolescents to Health and the Environment

Abstract

The article is devoted to adolescent health as an important potential of the country’s labor and population resources. The negative trends characterising the health of this age group in recent decades require the adoption of immediate and radical measures in the field of social policy. Based on the results of the study “Adolescent Health and the Environment” (2017), analysis of statistics, various documents and publications, an attempt was made to find out the nature of changes in the attitude of adolescents to their health and the environment under the influence of social policy measures. This approach examines the relationship between sociological indicators of adolescent attitude to health (self-esteem, motives and health factors, the presence of bad habits, attitude to the environment) and the impact of means and methods of social policy of various kinds. Advocacy of a healthy lifestyle forms attitudes towards a positive attitude to health and reliance on one’s own efforts to achieve it. A lack of attention to environmental issues at the regional level leads to a decrease in environmental concerns among these issues among young people. These processes can be traced by comparing the responses of the respondents of two cities (Ulan-Ude and Ulyanovsk) with significant differences, and by analysing the content components of the social policies of these regions. The conclusion is drawn about the effectiveness of the measures that form the specific behavior types of adolescents in the field of health.

Keywords

• adolescents
• regional characteristics
• social policy
• attitude to health
• environment