Talking About Health and Well-Being in Post-Soviet Ukraine and Russia

Abstract

Residents of Ukraine and Russia perceive their living conditions and health as very poor. This is coupled with concerns over access to social services and health care. There is a strong interaction between the poor quality of life after the economic and political collapse and the views of individual citizens about their ability to take responsibility for their health. The collapse of the former supportive system was a ‘cultural trauma’ that affected citizens' capacity for looking after their own health and well-being. In such a context of transition economies, the concept of agency is of limited explanatory value. This article is based on work produced as part of the ‘Living Conditions, Lifestyles and Health Project’ (LLH) funded by the EU under INCO-Copernicus (contract ICA 20000-10031). Professor Christian Haerpfer, University of Aberdeen, UK, who at the time worked at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, Austria, directed the project. Professor David Rotman (Belarus State University, Minsk), Professor Valeriy Nikolayevskiy (Kharkov, Ukraine) and Professor Sergei Tumanov (Moscow State University, Russian Federation) coordinated the research, which was supervised by the authors of this article. We are grateful to the members of the LLH research team who participated in the collection and charting of data and the medical experts and citizens in Russia and Ukraine who participated in interviews and focus groups. The Ethics Committee of the University of Derby approved the qualitative study, and oral informed consent was obtained from all study participants at the beginning of the interviews. The authors alone remain responsible for the views expressed in this article and they do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.