Social monitoring in studies of medico-social situitation in a Novgorod region

The article presents major results of the two stages of sociological monitoring focusing on public health and health care system in Novgorodskaya oblast in 2003-2005. The authors carry out sociological analysis of the collected data that contributes to update conceptual apparatus and techniques of the study of public health, research approaches to social empirical data collection and the evaluation of primary indicators of the study, reveal the trends of the social-medical situation in the region. Sociological monitoring is viewed to be a valuable addition to medical statistics and a basis for elaborating managerial decisions in the regional health care system.