Modern characteristics of the health status in higher education students and factors shaping it (literature review)

The economic development of a state is largely determined by an effective system of training highly qualified personnel and is greatly influenced by the health status in young people. Students are constantly under the influence of a complex of factors: socio-economic, environmental, medical-biological, climatic-geographical, and others, the combined impact of which can lead to both improvement and deterioration of their health. Consequently, studying the risk factors affecting the health in students is a relevant direction and the basis for effective primary prevention of adverse factor influences during the learning period. The aim of this work is to examine the current aspects of modern students’ health status and the factors affecting it. To achieve this goal, an analysis of literary data included in the databases “Scopus”, “Web of Science”, “PubMed”, “eLibrary”, and “Cyberleninka” was conducted. The search was carried out using queries “Student morbidity”, “Student health”, and “Risk factors”. As a result, it was established that the health status in student youth is deteriorating. Medical students have lower health indices compared to students from other universities. Climatic-geographical and ecological features of the region (using Primorsky Krai as an example) was shown to be potent of causing specific deviations in the health status of young people. Thus, despite active research conducted in recent years on the problem of student health status, determining the factors influencing its formation, and developing and implementing preventive measures remains an unresolved task. This problem requires further research, especially in the regional aspect.