[The health of the population of the Russian Federation: the problems and the outlook].

The paper provides evidence that the general assessment of Russia's population health suggests its poor state which can lead to deterioration of the quality of the population and to its limited creative participation in improving the socioeconomic situation in the country. Exigency of the nation's health promotion requires that an elaborate and sane, responsible state policy should be worked out in health protection with the purpose of legal regulation of the organizational, structural, financial, and economic principles of the functioning of the public health care system at the federal, regional, and local levels. Russia needs the legal reformation of the public health system, by preserving its beneficial characteristics and by revealing the mechanisms of its adaptation to the changing legal and socioeconomic conditions.