UDC 614:374

D. N. Loransky, M. I. Krasilshchikov, M. M. Merman

Health Education of the Population in the Formation of a Healthy Lifestyle

Central Research Institute of Health Education, USSR Ministry of Health, Moscow

One of the fundamental principles of Soviet health care is its preventive orientation. During the Ninth Five-Year Plan, the promotion of a healthy lifestyle found its clearest expression. A plenary session of the All-Union Council on Health Education in 1973 was devoted in particular to this issue. The following presents information drawn from the work of institutions in the Soviet republics.

The promotion of a healthy lifestyle naturally begins in the earliest years of childhood. Instilling hygienic habits in preschool institutions is the responsibility of educators, but it is essential that these habits also be reinforced at home. This is why, in the Ukrainian SSR, in many regions of the Russian Federation, and in the Baltic and other republics, considerable attention is given to seminars for medical personnel and educators, as well as to systematic work with parents. In recent years, hygiene training for support staff, on whom the epidemiological safety of these institutions largely depends, has been strengthened.

Whereas in nurseries and kindergartens hygienic habits are fostered through educators and parents, at school the pupils themselves become the focus of these efforts, although teachers conduct practical hygiene lessons under the school curriculum in the upper grades. Health education centers are responsible for organizing extracurricular health education, promoting health in Pioneer camps, and training teachers at teachers’ conferences and seminars.

The health education of schoolchildren is not limited to lessons in the curriculum. Extracurricular and out-of-school activities, particularly in Pioneer camps, play a substantial role. Alongside the familiar “health days,” “cleanliness matinees,” KVN contests, “Young Medic” clubs, and other activities, new forms are also being used: health carnivals and universities, health auctions, and competitions modeled on “Come On, Girls!” and “Come On, Boys!”

In Vologda, for example, a radio and television competition called “The Healing Basket” was organized. Schoolchildren collected 30 tonnes of medicinal raw materials and donated the money they earned to a children’s hospital under their patronage. Their engagement with nature, practical assistance to medicine, and humane use of the money earned must be counted as successes of health education.

It should be emphasized that out-of-school and extracurricular activities play a role in encouraging schoolchildren to consider medicine as a future profession.

Considerable attention is devoted to preventing childhood injuries. This is a complex problem: health and public education authorities, the State Automobile Inspectorate, and others all participate in addressing it. The health education service plays a leading role in promoting injury prevention.

In recent years, moral and sex education for schoolchildren and young people has improved considerably, particularly among students at vocational schools and technical colleges, where most youth health universities operate. The curricula of these educational institutions devote considerable attention to promoting a healthy lifestyle and to moral education. In the Lithuanian SSR, such work begins in the sixth grade of general education schools…

class, while in grades 10 and 11 a 12-hour course on communist morality and sex education, approved by the republic’s Ministry of Education, has been introduced.

The protection of women’s health occupies a leading place in health education programs. At conferences and meetings with obstetrician-gynecologists, and when these issues are discussed at meetings of the boards of medical councils, attention is generally given to women’s hygiene education and training, anti-abortion education, and the promotion of contraception. In Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and other republics, schools for expectant mothers and mothers have intensified their activities. In Alma-Ata, Guryev, and other regions of the Kazakh SSR, hundreds of women have decided against abortion over the past two years. Schools for fathers are operating successfully in many areas, and special leaflets entitled “To Husbands About Abortion” are being distributed, with a positive effect on the results of anti-abortion education.

Work with newlyweds is occupying an increasingly important place in the activities of health education centers. Lecture programs operate at wedding palaces and civil registry offices and are well attended by prospective spouses. The positive experience of this work in Moscow, Minsk, and elsewhere has received extensive press coverage. In Kishinev there is a People’s University for Young Family Health.

The promotion of a healthy lifestyle is of particular importance at industrial enterprises and among rural populations. The Central Scientific Research Institute of Health Education has recommended a system of hygiene training for workers that is being widely put into practice and has become the main component of health education at enterprises. These classes, following programs tailored to the principal occupations, are conducted as part of industrial and technical training, in specialized courses and advanced training courses, and in schools of communist labor and economic knowledge.

An important component of the system of hygiene training for workers is the introductory health and hygiene briefing for new employees; at many enterprises they receive special information leaflets. Visual aids and locally produced films depicting production processes are used, making these briefings more effective. In a number of regions, following the example of the people of Omsk and Chelyabinsk, the competition for a communist attitude toward health continues to be refined. Combined with hygiene training, such competition reduces illness and injuries and therefore produces a substantial economic benefit.

Despite the considerable shortcomings that remain in the organization of hygiene training and education for agricultural workers, there has been substantial progress. In particular, almost everyone involved in the storage, transportation, and use of pesticides receives hygiene training. The Kazakh SSR has achieved high rates of coverage among other categories of workers as well. Thus, in 1974, half of all milkmaids and one-third of machine operators, poultry workers, and pig farmers received training. In Ukraine, 1.4 million people were trained; in Belarus, 138,000; and in the Lithuanian SSR, 86,000 agricultural workers.

In many republics, cooperation on these issues has improved between the republics’ ministries of health and agriculture and their vocational education committees. Evidence of this is the All-Union Conference on Hygiene Training for Rural Workers held in Minsk in 1975.

The promotion of a healthy lifestyle is the leading direction in the dissemination of medical and hygiene knowledge. The increased educational

…educational attainment and the material and cultural standards of Soviet people create favorable conditions for this. Promoting a healthy lifestyle means promoting all aspects of hygiene: personal and public hygiene, hygiene of work and rest, domestic life and nutrition, physical culture and sport, as well as combating harmful habits such as alcohol abuse and smoking.

Some progress has been made in promoting a balanced diet. This subject is widely represented in the programs of people’s universities and health schools, and informational leaflets are produced for the public. In food stores, displays and information boards on balanced nutrition are being set up (Latvian SSR). Some republican health education centers have republished and widely distributed recommendations issued by the Central Scientific Research Institute of Health Education, agreed upon with the Institute of Nutrition of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences and approved by the USSR Ministry of Health. This work gained particular momentum with the observance of World Health Day in 1974 under the slogan “Better Food for a Healthier World.”

Hygiene in all its aspects is promoted most consistently and systematically in organized groups, and considerably less so in residential communities among people who are not employed. Yet these people often play a major role in maintaining hygiene in domestic life and participate in community campaigns to improve and green residential areas.

Under present-day conditions, physical culture is becoming one of the widely accessible and highly effective factors shaping the population’s social health. The new GTO program provides the curricular and normative foundation for the physical education of Soviet people. Its promotion has come to occupy an important place in the work of health education institutions and medical workers. Nevertheless, this promotion remains narrow in scope. In particular, insufficient attention is paid to tourism, whose popularity is growing extraordinarily rapidly, even though questions of nutrition and daily regimen are especially important for tourists traveling independently and, in practice, without supervision. Too little is also done to promote the effective use of leisure time and proper forms of recreation, which are closely connected with physical culture and tourism.

The social importance of combating drunkenness and alcoholism is well known. The Party and the government devote great attention to this issue, as evidenced by the 1972 resolutions of the CPSU Central Committee and the Council of Ministers.

Combating drunkenness and alcoholism is a complex problem addressed with the participation of Party and Soviet authorities, enterprise management, and public organizations. Medical workers play a major role in anti-alcohol education. Health education centers have accumulated considerable positive experience in this field. Alongside traditional methods—lectures and discussions, and the publication of popular health education materials such as posters, leaflets, and handouts—many republics are creatively exploring and introducing new forms of work. The greatest success is achieved where the wider public participates in carrying them out.

In Liepāja (Latvian SSR), the anti-alcohol club “Mayak” has been established and is operating successfully; in Tartu (Estonian SSR), there is “Antibakhus.” Participation is strictly voluntary, and the club leaders respond sensitively to each visitor. Through interaction with club members, individual discussions, and participation in cultural and educational activities, people themselves come to recognize the need to put an end to “voluntary madness.”

By cultivating intolerance of drunkenness and shaping public attitudes toward it as a phenomenon alien to the socialist system, harmful to human health, and detrimental to work activi…

…activity and family relationships must be addressed first and foremost in workplace collectives. It is there that the focus of anti-alcohol education should be shifted.

Health authorities and the health education service have always paid considerable attention to public participation in community-wide health initiatives to improve working and living conditions, develop amenities, and increase green space in populated areas. Environmental protection and the enhancement of natural resources have now been elevated to the status of major national priorities, and this should be reflected in health education. Nature and health are inseparable. Careful stewardship and proper use of natural resources, and contact with nature, bring immeasurable benefits to health.

The 25th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union once again emphasized the importance of protecting public health: “Among social tasks, none is more important than caring for the health of the Soviet people” (L. I. Brezhnev). The tasks of practical health care and medical science for the current five-year plan have been defined. Research will be expanded into combating cardiovascular, oncological, endocrine, viral, and occupational diseases and diseases of the nervous system, as well as into improving working conditions and making them healthier, and promoting balanced nutrition.

The social and economic importance of these problems requires health education centers, through their organizational and methodological work, to direct health workers toward strengthening prevention of these diseases as a vital component of a healthy way of life.

Developing a system for promoting a healthy way of life among particular population groups in the country’s various economic and geographical regions is one of the principal areas of research at the Central Research Institute of Health Education and the All-Union Problem Commission on Health Education.

The 25th CPSU Congress defined the immediate tasks involved in educating the new person, the builder of communist society. In his report to the Congress, L. I. Brezhnev said: “…present-day conditions pose new challenges for the Party’s ideological work. The experience of Party organizations points us toward a way to increase its effectiveness. This is a comprehensive approach to education as a whole—that is, ensuring the close integration of ideological and political, labor, and moral education, while taking account of the characteristics of different groups of working people.” This profound insight guides the practical work of the health education service, which always draws on the experience of Party organizations in ideological work.

The promotion of a healthy way of life as part of the socialist, Soviet way of life must continue to be the principal focus in disseminating medical and hygienic knowledge.

Received October 1, 1976.