Healthy Russia 2020

Healthy Russia's strategic approach includes the following main components:

• Creating a supportive environment for change: Conducting situation analyses of public health problems and presenting the results to key stakeholders; developing and using resource needs models for health care planning and policy change; widening the participation of civil society in accelerating changes in health and social systems; and working in collaboration with mass-media representatives, policy makers, and health and educational decision makers to support positive changes in HIV/AIDS and RH as well as other public health areas.
• Working with youth in schools: Developing curricula and materials, conducting training for teachers, organising orientations for parents, and providing support to schools in implementing life skills for programmes that motivate young people to protect themselves against health risks, such as HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and teenage pregnancy.
• Reaching young people out of school: Widening and improving the quality of peer education programmes and improving the activities of health and social services to make them "youth-friendly" and "couple-friendly".
• Increasing professional skills of health care providers: Increasing levels of knowledge and improving the attitudes and communication and counseling skills of health providers to change the "doctor-patient" relationship; reducing stereotypical attitudes, stigma, and discrimination; and working to improve the overall quality of medical services.
• Creating mass media programmes at central and regional levels: Developing TV, radio, print media, and other mass media strategies that are linked to improved services and address various sections of the population, for social and behavioural change.
• Researching, monitoring, and evaluation: Developing and conducting quantitative and qualitative research to establish baselines, shape messages and materials, monitor progress, and measure mid-term and final results.
• Disseminating results: Using Healthy Russia’s website, workshops, symposia, and the mass media to disseminate the results of formative research and evaluations, as well as the communication materials derived from project activities.

To expand on one element of the above-delineated approach, Healthy Russia 2020 carried out formative research in the form of in-depth interviews with health care providers not specialising in HIV/AIDS in Orenburg and Ivanovo Regions. Organisers incorporated the findings - which included fear of and disgust toward HIV/AIDS patients, and attributions of blame for their situation - into the counselling programme they developed. In order to foster friendly service provision shaped around healthy communication and respect for patients' rights (e.g., to confidential conversations), the project created printed materials such as prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) cue cards and manuals outlining a more holistic communication approach. An interactive video illustrating poor and good counselling techniques was created as part of the training curriculum, which includes courses for medical providers in 6 regions. The research results also shaped the development of materials for the public, such as posters, stickers, and a brochure on voluntary counselling and testing (VCT). Evaluation plans for this portion of the project were put into place.

In the framework of the project, a Russian non-governmental organisation (NGO), the Healthy Russia Foundation, was established in 2003 with the goal of disseminating technologies and methodologies developed as part of Healthy Russia 2020. One tool for this communication is the Healthy Russia website (Russian language only). In addition, the Foundation is working to develop new initiatives in healthy lifestyles and other priority public health areas through collaboration with international and bilateral donor agencies, Russian governmental and state bodies, non-governmental agencies and foundations, and the private sector.

Health, Reproductive Health, HIV/AIDS, Youth.

According to organisers, data show that unhealthy lifestyle behaviours in Russia, such as smoking and alcohol abuse, are leading to increased illness and death. In addition, they say that the HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) epidemics are growing, the health of women and infants is declining, and the current Russian health system is not geared toward prevention. For example, 2004 figures provided by The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) indicated that 800,000 Russians were infected with HIV (the Federal AIDS Center put that estimate at 1 million). Heterosexual transmission was found to be growing, as was infection among women.