Role played by a family in creating healthy lifestyle and eliminating risk factors that cause threats to children's and teenagers’ health

The paper focuses on socializing potential than belongs to a family in creating attitudes towards health and healthy lifestyle among children and teenagers. The author describes basic behavioral risks for young people’s health and a role played by the closest social environment in minimizing or aggravating them. The author also provides an insight into concepts of health and healthy lifestyle and dwells on how important it is to perform constant monitoring over children’s and teenagers’ health as they represent quite a specific social and demographic group. The author analyzes data on morbidity growth among children and teenagers in Russia, how susceptible they are to addictive behavior and other risk factors, and also compares these parameters with world trends. The latest statistical data and analysis of data available from literature allowed showing that, in spite of huge socializing potential that a family has as a social institution, at present parents are rather limited in terms of activities that can help them improve and preserve their children’s health...