Influence of the Crisis on Public Health in Saint-Petersburg and Goals of Social Policy

Abstract

The influence of the geopolitical and economic crisis of 2014 on the health of the residents of St. Petersburg was studied. According to the accepted hypothesis, the crisis had a negative impact on the health of the townspeople and the conditions for their livelihoods. To test the hypothesis, we examined the dynamics of indicators characterizing the health of the population, as well as the factors that affect it. To analyze pre-crisis trends, a linear trend was constructed for each indicator and extrapolated values for the two following the peak crisis were calculated. The main measure, which characterizes the impact of the crisis on the dynamics of the indicator, was a negative deviation from the trend in these years. More than twenty indicators were analyzed, which showed a negative deviation, a significant negative deviation from the trend of indicators of environmental protection, resource health care, consumption of food products. It is shown that the current healthcare development program of the city contains understated targets and does not take into account environmental factors, which reduces its effectiveness as an instrument of regional social policy. The proposed method makes it possible to calculate scientifically grounded targets for the programs of restorative development of the social sphere in St. Petersburg.