Ecological and social «risk factors» for students’ healthy lifestyle promotion

Abstract

The most important condition for the sustainable development of socio-ecological and economic systems at all levels, from regional to national, is undoubtedly a balanced socio-demographic development. It is connected with the presence of sufficiently numerous social groups of a professionally competent, physically and morally healthy population that also serves as the basis for the national security of the country. The number of students in the Samara Region at the level of more than 100 thousand people provides good opportunities for qualified professionals’ training, whose activities are not limited to the space of the Samara Region. In addition to acquiring professional knowledge, skills and general and special competencies development, young people studying in higher education must also acquire a deep and conscious motivation to lead a healthy lifestyle. In this paper, we present a part of the comprehensive research that we are already carrying out, related to the ecology-population basics of student health status promotion. An important moment in this respect is, according to WHO, the fight against obesity, and one of the relatively accessible indicators is the body mass index (BMI). For model groups of Samara University students the distribution according to the body mass index shows a prevalence of the normal level of the indicator (from 20 to 24) - for young men and the indicator 20 (the lower limit of the norm) for girls. This is a good «starting point» for motivating students to lead a healthy lifestyle in the future.