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This study presents analysis of the international and Russian experience of implementation of “health in all policies” approach into legislation, as well as of health impact assessment. Certain steps towards the implementation of this approach have already been made in Russia, however, in general, there is still a lot to be done. It was revealed that the current system regulatory impact assessment (RIA) in Russia has a narrow focus and is focused on protecting the interests of business, which does not correspond to the well-established world practice, which presupposes complex RIA, including the impact of regulation on public health. Recommendations for strengthening the principle of “health by all policies” in Russian legislation and the introduction of the practice of assessing the regulatory impact on public health in Russia are presented.

The purpose of the study was to identify promising measures to reduce mortality in Russia. Methods used included analysis of systematic reviews from PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar. Results. Many reasonable measures for reducing mortality in Russia include promoting healthy behaviour (tobacco control, alcohol control, support for healthy diet, physical activity) and preventing death due to external causes. It is necessary to increase the effectiveness of disease management, including arterial hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular accidents, hepatitis C, HIV. This could require intensifying digital transformation of health care, implementing modern teamwork approaches to the patient’s treatment and follow-up with greater involvement of nurses and other personnel. In terms of screening, it is essential to expand coverage and introduce modern, effective screening methods for colorectal cancer, cervical cancer, and neonatal screening. It is necessary to expand vaccination against Covid-19, vaccination of the elderly from Pneumococcus, and adolescents from HPV. Prevention of mortality from external causes should include sets of measures targeted at the prevention of suicides, traffic accidents, fires, drownings, etc., in addition to alcohol control measures. Finally, increasing health care financing, including medication provision, can bring additional years of life. Conclusions. Russia has significant potential to implement new measures to reduce the mortality rate.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-2-nad-10.1177_14550725231183236 for Translating and adapting the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) for use in the Russian Federation: A multicentre pilot study to inform validation procedures by Maria Neufeld, Anna Bunova, Eugenia Fadeeva, Alexey Nadezhdin, Elena Tetenova, Konstantin Vyshinsky, Carina Ferreira-Borges, Elena Yurasova, Andrey Allenov and Boris Gornyi in Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-nad-10.1177_14550725231183236 for Translating and adapting the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) for use in the Russian Federation: A multicentre pilot study to inform validation procedures by Maria Neufeld, Anna Bunova, Eugenia Fadeeva, Alexey Nadezhdin, Elena Tetenova, Konstantin Vyshinsky, Carina Ferreira-Borges, Elena Yurasova, Andrey Allenov and Boris Gornyi in Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs

Aims Non-beverage alcohol was a major cause of preventable mortality of working-age males in Izhevsk (Russia) in 2003–2004. The Russian government has since taken measures to reduce availability of non-beverage alcohol. Yet, some types of non-beverage alcohol still remain available for consumers. The aim of this study was to assess the availability and sources of non-beverage alcohol in Udmurtia. Methods A survey of adults on the streets of Izhevsk and its environs was performed on workdays to assess non-beverage drinking patterns in 2018. The questionnaire included questions about socio-demographic status and alcohol use, including non-beverage alcohol consumption and drinking patterns. Results One hundred and sixty-eight people were questioned, of whom, 28% reported consuming non-beverage alcohol. Non-beverage alcohol consumers were more likely to be single, unemployed or retired, younger or older than 19–29 years, have lower educational status and income, have hangovers and drink moonshine. Conclusion Non-beverage alcohol consumption still took place at Izhevsk, a typical Russian city, in 2018, and its availability was still high. Untaxed and cheap medicinal non-beverage alcohol consumption seems to have become the major source of non-beverage alcohol consumption. Further regulation of non-beverage alcohol may be required in Russia.

Aims To adapt and validate the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) for use in the Russian Federation and countries with Russian-speaking populations by: 1) Operationalizing alcohol use patterns to allow for the best identification of hazardous use patterns in the Russian context. 2) Determining the best cut-off values for brief advice/interventions in primary healthcare settings. 3) Determining the best cut-off values for potential alcohol use disorders. Methods Systematic review of past use and validation of the Russian-language AUDIT. Interviews to be conducted with experts to identify problems encountered in the use of existing Russian-language AUDIT versions. A pilot study using a revised translation of the Russian-language AUDIT that incorporates country-specific drinking patterns in the Russian Federation. Results and Conclusions The systematic review identified over 60 different Russian-language AUDIT versions without systematic validation studies. The main difficulties encountered with the use of the AUDIT in the Russian Federation were related to the lack of: a concept and definition for a standard drink; low-risk drinking guidelines/thresholds and inclusion of the specific drinking pattern of episodic heavy drinking. A revised version of the Russian-language AUDIT was created based on the pilot studies, and was validated in primary healthcare facilities in all regions in 2019/2020., Short Summary To introduce the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) into primary healthcare settings in the Russian Federation, consultations with experts and several initial studies were conducted to adapt the instrument. This article presents the final instrument and the steps taken to construct it. It also presents the design of the validation study to determine alcoholic intake thresholds for appropriate interventions.

Aim. Assessment of the health consequences of substance use in the form of lost years of healthy life in the world in comparison with Russia. An additional task was to determine the economic losses from alcohol, tobacco and drugs in the Russian Federation. Methods. We used indicators of mortality, morbidity, prevalence, and years of life lost, taking into account the DALY disability from tobacco, alcohol, opiates, cannabis, and other drugs (ICD10: I42.6, K70.03, Z72.0, F10-19). Indicators of harmful health effects from PS were presented from 1990 to 2017. Variables were standardized by age and sex. An economic assessment of the impact of tobacco, alcohol, and drugs denominated in rubles was applied. Results. Total economic losses from psychoactive substances, expressed in rubles, amounted to from 887.4 billion to 8.5 trillion rubles in Russia in 2017. The greatest harmful effects on health from psychoactive substances in Russia and the world are caused by tobacco, with alcohol in the second place. The damage from smoking in Russia in years of lost life including disability DALY amounted to 8.6 million in 2017 Alcohol consumption and its consequences in Russia caused 1.85 million DALYs of harm to health, alcoholic cirrhosis and other liver diseases-643 thousand DALYs. Conclusion. Alcohol and nicotine cause maximum harm to the health and economy of Russia, and in conditions of limited resources, the main efforts should be directed at preventing the consequences of alcoholism and tobacco smoking.

The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) is one of the most frequently used screening instrument for hazardous and harmful use of alcohol and potential alcohol dependence in primary health care (PHC) and other settings worldwide. It has been translated into many languages and adapted and modified for use in some countries, following formal adaptation procedures and validation studies. In the Russian Federation, the AUDIT has been used in different settings and by different health professionals, including addiction specialists (narcologists). In 2017, it was included as a screening instrument in the national guidelines of routine preventive health checks at the population-level (dispanserization). However, various Russian translations of the AUDIT are known to be in use in different settings and, so far, little is known about the empirical basis and validation of the instrument in Russia—a country, which is known for its distinct drinking patterns and their detrimental impact on health. The present contribution is the summary of two systematic reviews that were carried out to inform a planned national validation study of the AUDIT in Russia. Two systematic searches were carried out to 1) identify all validation efforts of the AUDIT in Russia and to document all reported problems encountered, and 2) identify all globally existing Russian translations of the AUDIT and document their differences and any reported issues in their application. The qualitative narrative synthesis of all studies that met the inclusion criteria of the first search highlighted the absence of any large-scale rigorous validation study of the AUDIT in primary health care in Russia, while a document analysis of all of the 122 Russian translations has revealed 61 unique versions, most of which contained inconsistencies and signaled obvious application challenges of the test. The results clearly signal the need for a validation study of the Russian AUDIT. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13011-021-00404-8.

In the 2000s, Russia was globally one of the top 5 countries with the highest levels of alcohol per capita consumption and prevailing risky patterns of drinking, i.e., high intake per occasion, high proportion of people drinking to intoxication, and high frequency of situations where alcohol is consumed and tolerated. In 2009, in response to these challenges, the Russian government formed the Federal Service for Alcohol Market Regulation and published a national strategy concept to reduce alcohol abuse and alcohol-dependence at the population level for the period 2010&ndash, 2020. The objectives of the present contribution are to analyze the evidence base of the core components of the concept and to provide a comprehensive evaluation framework of measures implemented (process evaluation) and the achievement of the formulated targets (effect evaluation). Most of the concept&rsquo, s measures were found to be evidence-based and aligned with eight out of 10 areas of the World Health Organization (WHO) policy portfolio. Out of the 14 tasks, 7 were rated as achieved, and 7 as partly achieved. Ten years after the concept&rsquo, s adoption, alcohol consumption seems to have declined by about a third and alcohol is conceptualized as a broad risk factor for the population&rsquo, s health in Russia.

Significance. Over the last two decades, Russia has been regestering the increased prevalence of high blood pressure among adults. The relationship between blood pressure and mortality from diseases of the circulatory system has been proved. Reducing morbidity and mortality from diseases of the circulatory system calles for improved efficiency of the state health system to detect and control blood pressure at the population level. Purpose. To improve organization of measures aimed at detecting high blood pressure and enhancing control of arterial hypertension in order to reduce adult mortality from diseases of the circulatory system in Russia. Material and methods. The authors have conducted a content analysis of regulatory and legal documents regulating activities of individual structures of the public health system on medical examination and follow-up of patients with chronic non-communicable diseases, registration and reporting forms of the federal statistical surveillance (FSN No. 12) and industry statistical surveillance (No.131/o), including information on the number of adults with arterial hypertension residing within the catchment area of the healthcare facility in dynamics from 2010 to 2019, as well as information on the number of newly diagnosed cases of arterial hypertension during medical examination of certain groups of the Russian adult population in 2015-2019; and the number of patients taken under medical follow-up with the detected (including newly diagnosed) arterial hypertension. Results. During the period from 2010 to 2019, the number of registered patients with arterial hypertension in Russia increased by 5.4 million (46%), from 11.7 in 2010 to 17.1 million in 2019. The rate of growth in the detection of new cases of arterial hypertension actively increased with initiation of the state program on medical examination of certain groups of the adult population (state checkup for non-communicable diseases). Coverage with follow-up of patients with arterial hypertension increased from 905.7 thous. in 2015 (69.5%) to 1321.4 thous. (77.0%) in 2019, including among newly detected cases during medical examination from 74.9 to 83.4%. Decrease in mortality from arterial hypertension, diseases of the circulatory system and total mortality over the period under study (2010-2019) in Russia is primarily associated with the improved detection of arterial hypertension, increased effectiveness of drug treatment and control of arterial hypertension. Conclusion. Improved detection, drug treatment and control of arterial hypertension have contributed to the decrease in mortality from arterial hypertension, diseases of the circulatory system and total mortality in the Russian adults.

The disease criteria used by the World Health Organization (WHO) were applied to human biological aging in order to assess whether aging can be classified as a disease. These criteria were developed for the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) and included disease diagnostics, mechanisms, course and outcomes, known interventions, and linkage to genetic and environmental factors. RESULTS: Biological aging can be diagnosed with frailty indices, functional, blood-based biomarkers. A number of major causal mechanisms of human aging involved in various organs have been described, such as inflammation, replicative cellular senescence, immune senescence, proteostasis failures, mitochondrial dysfunctions, fibrotic propensity, hormonal aging, body composition changes, etc. We identified a number of clinically proven interventions, as well as genetic and environmental factors of aging. Therefore, aging fits the ICD-11 criteria and can be considered a disease. Our proposal was submitted to the ICD-11 Joint Task force, and this led to the inclusion of the extension code for "Ageing-related" (XT9T) into the "Causality" section of the ICD-11. This might lead to greater focus on biological aging in global health policy and might provide for more opportunities for the new therapy developers.

Aims To explain comprehensively variations in adult male mortality rate in Europe, and in particular, high mortality in some East European countries with particular focus on specific patterns of alcohol consumption. Short summary Per capita distilled spirits consumption is found to be the strongest determinant of the adult male mortality rate in Europe as soon as the unrecorded alcohol consumption is taken into account. It turns out to be much stronger than the other tested significant determinants such as per capita health expenditures, smoking prevalence, consumption of hard drugs and per capita consumption of vegetables and fruit. Methods Ordinary least squares (OLS) multiple regression with adult male mortality rate as a dependent variable, and various indicators of alcohol and drug consumption as well as logarithm of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, logarithm of total per capita health expenditures, latitude (climatic factors), per capita fruit and vegetable consumption, smoking prevalence as independent factors. Results Per capita distilled spirits consumption turns out to be the strongest determinant of the adult male mortality rate in Europe as soon as the unrecorded alcohol consumption is taken into account. It turns out to be much stronger than the other tested significant determinants of the adult male mortality rate such as per capita health expenditures, smoking prevalence, consumption of hard drugs and per capita consumption of vegetables and fruit. Still, higher per capita wine consumption has turned out to be a marginally significant determinant of the higher adult male mortality rate in some tests. Latitude, beer and soft drug consumption have turned out insignificant in this study. Conclusions Spirits consumption is a major risk factor of adult male mortality, with significantly greater impact compared to beer and wine. Therefore, reduction in distilled spirits consumption in hard liquor drinking areas should be a major target in health policy.

Aims: To elucidate the possible effects of alcohol control policy measures on alcohol-related mortality in Russia between 1998 and 2013. Methods: Trends in mortality, alcohol production and sales were analyzed in conjunction with alcohol control legislative measures. Correlation analysis of health and alcohol market indicators was performed. Results: Ethyl alcohol production was the strongest correlate of alcohol-related mortality, which is probably due to the fact that ethyl alcohol is used for both recorded and unrecorded alcohol production. Measures producing greatest mortality reduction effect included provisions which reduced ethyl alcohol production (introduction of minimum authorized capital for ethyl alcohol and liquor producers in 2006 and the requirement for distillery dreg processing), as well as measures to tax and denaturize ethanol-containing liquids in 2006. Liquor tax decrease in real terms was associated with rising mortality in 1998–1999, while excise tax increase was associated with mortality reduction in 2004 and since 2012. Conventional alcohol control measures may also have played a moderately positive role. Conclusions: Countries with high alcohol-related mortality should aim for a reduction in spirits consumption as a major health policy. Alcohol market centralization and reduction of the numberof producers canhave immediate strong effects on mortality. These measuresshould be combinedwith an increase in alcohol taxes and prices, as well as other established alcohol policy measures. In 2015 in Russia, this is not being implemented. In Russia, legislation enforcement including excise tax collection remains the major challenge. Another challenge will be the integration into the Eurasian Economic Union.

Emerging life extension technologies, as well as some already existing biomedical interventions to prevent ageing-related pathological processes, have significant potential to alleviate the burden of disease in the aging world. However, promoting these technologies requires research in public opinion and the use of marketing techniques. We studied social attitudes towards life extension technologies and geroprotective medicine use with 3 focus groups. The total sample included 18 people with university degrees, 25-70 years old, and living in Moscow (Russia). The tested messages were obtained in advance by the survey of 30 experts in gerontology. The focus group participants got most convinced with the messages that aging prevention is a way to live longer and healthier lives. Despite the concerns of the experts, the idea that aging is a disease convinces considerable share of the informants when the scientific evidences of the connection between aging processes and aging-related health damage are provided. Research details in general made the human life extension feasibility more convincing. Introducing new agendas into discussion (pensions, overpopulation, etc.) turned out to be counterproductive due to new counterarguments emerging in the group discussions. The idea of radical life extension (i.e. reaching lifespan of 200+ years) was perceived skeptically. Some skepticism was attributed to mistrust and disappointment in the modern healthcare system in general. Gene therapies were perceived with caution. The word «geroprotector» is not well known even to the educated general public.Новые технологии продления жизни и общепринятые терапии, направленные на профилактику возрастных патологических процессов, имеют значительный потенциал снижения бремени болезней с учетом старения населения мира. Однако продвижение этих технологий требует изучения общественного мнения с использованием методов маркетинга. Исследовали социальные установки в отношении технологий продления жизни и применения лекарств-геропротекторов путем проведения трех фокус-групп. Выборка составила 18 человек 25-70 лет с высшим образованием, проживающих в Москве. Тестируемые утверждения были предварительно получены путем опроса 30 экспертов в области геронтологии. Участникам фокус-групп наиболее убедительным показалось утверждение о том, что «профилактика старения поможет сохранять здоровье, увеличить активный период жизни». Несмотря на сомнения экспертов, тезис о том, что старение это болезнь, показался убедительным значительной части информантов в свете предоставленных доказательств связи между процессами старения и ухудшением здоровья с возрастом. Введение в дискуссию дополнительных тем (пенсии, перенаселение) оказалось контрпродуктивным, поскольку приводило к новым контраргументам в групповой дискуссии. Идея радикального продления жизни (200 лет и более) воспринималась скептически. Скептицизм отчасти объяснялся недоверием и недовольством существующей системой здравоохранения. Генные терапии вызывали опасение. Слово «геропротекторы» мало знакомо даже образованной публике.

We are happy to have our article (Khaltourina and Korotayev, 2015) reviewed by Prof. Nemtsov, whose work on alcohol-related mortality in Russia greatly improved our understanding of the problem, as well as by Prof. Razvodovsky, whose work provides important insights on alcohol situation in Belarus (Nemtsov and Razvodovsky, 2016). The effect of policy measures on alcohol mortality in Russia is a topic hard to research, because in this country alcohol is regulated predominantly at the national level, unlike in such countries as the USA, Canada and Australia where states and provinces have a mandate to develop their own laws, which allows for cross-sectional analysis of the policy effects. We only have one-time series data set without regional policy variation in Russia. There is also a problem of high unrecorded production and sales. Additionally, not all regulation documents are available for the public. Therefore, in our article, we have qualified our conclusions as interpretations and hypotheses. We are happy to discuss alternative explanations of the alcohol mortality dynamics in Russia, as long as they are well documented and substantiated, with ‘serious scientific proofs’, as Razvodovsky and Nemtsov (2016) call it. Razvodovsky and Nemtsov propose the following explanation of alcohol mortality decrease in Russia from 2005 to 2013: It is …

Our goal was to detect and describe a common “core” structure of romantic love and to also discover and explain variations due to cultural or gender differences between three national cultures: the United States, Russia, and Lithuania. Our sample consisted of 262 American males, 362 American females, 166 Russian males, 130 females, 102 Lithuanian males, and 135 Lithuanian females—a total of 1,157 people. Our analysis was derived from (a) a 14-item questionnaire; (b) freelist responses to the question “What do you associate with romantic love?” and (c) interview and focus group data. The questionnaire was devised by employing well-known quotations about romantic love that cover a range of feelings and perceptions of love. Our results showed that there is no overall consensus but there was cross-cultural consensus on five variables: intrusive thinking, happiness; passion; altruism; and improve well-being of partner. In the freelist portion, we also found some significant similarities—particularly the desire to be together was ranked first across all three cultures. However key cultural differences were found. Friendship and comfort love were critical features of romantic love for the U.S. sample, but nonexistent for the Lithuanian and Russian samples. Conversely, the latter two samples saw love as “unreal,” “temporary,” and “a fairytale.” These cultural differences were explored through interviews and shown to serve as different cultural frames used to interpret similar emotional complexes. We suggest that the differences do not affect the evolutionary functions of romantic love and are adaptations to different types of social organizations. The etic-emic approach used in this cross-cultural research provides for a more nuanced, ethnographically sound, and cross-culturally valid description and analysis of the form and function of romantic love cross culturally than does either approach by itself.

WOS: 000235484300004, PubMed ID: 20976033, This article reports two worldwide studies of stereotypes about liars. These studies are carried out in 75 different countries and 43 different languages. In Study 1, participants respond to the open-ended question "How can you tell when people are lying?" In Study 2, participants complete a questionnaire about lying. These two studies reveal a dominant pan-cultural stereotype: that liars avert gaze. The authors identify other common beliefs and offer a social control interpretation., NICHD NIH HHSUnited States Department of Health & Human ServicesNational Institutes of Health (NIH) - USANIH Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD) [R01 HD048962-05, R01 HD048962]

The escape from the “Malthusian trap” is shown to tend to generate in a rather systematic way quite serious political upheavals. Some demographic structural mechanisms that generate such upheavals have been analyzed, which has made it possible to develop a mathematical model of the respective processes. The forecast of political instability in African and West Asian countries in 2012–2050 produced on the basis of this model is presented.

Post-Soviet Russia experiences among the world's highest prevalence of alcohol-related problems, which contributes to high mortality rates in this region. Reduction in alcohol-related problems in Russia can have strong effects on mortality decline. This article considers the plausibility of application of general principles of alcohol policy translated in the Russian Federation. We conclude that alcohol policy approaches could be implemented in the same ways as they have been in other countries. In addition, there should be special attention to decreasing distilled spirits consumption, illegal alcohol production, nonbeverage alcohol consumption, and enforcement of current governmental regulations.

Disparate cultural practices suggest that small foot size may contribute to female attractiveness. Two hypotheses potentially explain such a pattern. Sexual dimorphism in foot size may lead observers to view small feet as feminine and large feet as masculine. Alternately, because small female feet index both youth and nulliparity, evolution may have favored a male preference for this attribute in order to maximize returns on male reproductive investment. Whereas the observational hypothesis predicts symmetrical polarizing preferences, with small feet being preferred in women and large feet being preferred in men, the evolutionary hypothesis predicts asymmetrical preferences, with the average phenotype being preferred in men. Using line drawings that varied only in regard to relative foot size, we examined judgments of attractiveness in nine cultures. Small foot size was generally preferred for females, while average foot size was preferred for males. These results provide preliminary support for the hypothesis that humans possess an evolved preference for small feet in females.

This article presents some results of cross-cultural research on perception of the term "culture" by university students in the United States and the Russian Federation. It includes the comparison of the summarized responses between the two national groups and the exploration of gender and age influence on the responses. The specific focus is made on differences between responses on different items within national groups. The field of research involves the study (with the technique of cross-national research) of cognitive processes, some aspects of cultural identity, cross-national differences, gender attitudes and semantic studies as proposed by early Cultural Studies researchers. On the basis of factor analysis of the data "Cognitive World Maps" of American and Russian students are constructed. American students of our sample tend to perceive themselves as living in a sort of a "cave" of unsafe low spirituality of their student community in a large "island" of "safe low spirituality" of their own country, which is in its turn situated in an "ocean" of "unsafe high spirituality" of the large world of human culture. In contrast with them Russian students of our sample tend to perceive themselves as living in a sort of a "cave" of safe low spirituality of their student community in a large "island" of "unsafe high spirituality" of their own country, which is in its turn situated in an "ocean" of "safe medium spirituality" of the large world of human culture.