1st Edition
Health and Health Care in the New Russia
This volume explores the nature of health and health-care experiences in Russia by comparing societies and communities with different socio-cultural conditions. The unique use of longitudinal data collected over ten years, allows the authors to address key questions on Russians individual experiences of health care and their understanding of its influencing factors. They explore the methods of self treatment and illness prevention in combination with the effects poverty and treatment availability can have on the standards of living for the people surveyed. This pertinent issue follows a time of rapidly worsening health status amongst the Russian population and a grave decline in male life expectancy. The findings are set within the context of experience from Finland and the UK, allowing the authors to explore the challenge of the Russian health-care crisis to Western European models of health status and health care.
Biography
Nick Manning is Professor of Social Policy and Sociology at the University of Nottingham, UK. Nataliya Tikhonova is Professor at the Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. They are the editors of two companion volumes: Poverty and Social Exclusion in the New Russia (2004) and (with Ovsey Shkaratan) Work and Welfare in the New Russia (2000).
'The contributors to this volume offer incisive and probing analyses of the complex interrelationships between poverty, changing employment patterns, the nature of personal social support networks, gender and attitudes towards work and healthcare. Vivid quotations from longitudinal data reveal the multifaceted dimensions of Russian worries in years of reform and uncertainty. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Russian politics and society and for those who study global attitudes towards access to medical care and self-treatment.' Mary Buckley, Cambridge University, UK 'At last a book which combines qualitative and epidemiological approaches in an illuminating study of one of the most striking demographic developments of our time. Between 1990 and 1994 the life expectancy of Russian men fell by over six years. This book is essential reading for everyone who wants to gain a fuller understanding of the relationship between politics, health and health care in Russia's transition to capitalism.' Peggy Watson, Cambridge University, UK '... this is an excellent and thought-provoking book that needs to be read by students and researchers seeking to understand the continuing Russian health crisis.' Health Sociology Review 'The book contains a wealth of detailed information with chapters written by different authors.' Journal of Social Policy 'This is an important and timely book that should be of interest to those concerned with health care in Russia, but also to readers who want to understand post-Soviet economic and social change more broadly.' The Russian Review 'The approach adopted in the book is different; the Russian health crisis is presented here in a wider perspective, taking into consideration the social context an ’life situations of people experiencing health problems’...The richness of empirical material gathered by the authors, the clarity of presentation, the plurality of applied methods and the scrupulousness in presentatio
