No abstract

Aims To adapt and validate the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) for use in the Russian Federation and countries with Russian-speaking populations by: Methods Systematic review of past use and validation of the Russian-language AUDIT. Interviews to be conducted with experts to identify problems encountered in the use of existing Russian-language AUDIT versions. A pilot study using a revised translation of the Russian-language AUDIT that incorporates country-specific drinking patterns in the Russian Federation. Results and Conclusions The systematic review identified over 60 different Russian-language AUDIT versions without systematic validation studies. The main difficulties encountered with the use of the AUDIT in the Russian Federation were related to the lack of: A revised version of the Russian-language AUDIT was created based on the pilot studies, and was validated in primary healthcare facilities in all regions in 2019/2020.

In the 2000s, Russia was globally one of the top 5 countries with the highest levels of alcohol per capita consumption and prevailing risky patterns of drinking, i.e., high intake per occasion, high proportion of people drinking to intoxication, and high frequency of situations where alcohol is consumed and tolerated. In 2009, in response to these challenges, the Russian government formed the Federal Service for Alcohol Market Regulation and published a national strategy concept to reduce alcohol abuse and alcohol-dependence at the population level for the period 2010–2020. The objectives of the present contribution are to analyze the evidence base of the core components of the concept and to provide a comprehensive evaluation framework of measures implemented (process evaluation) and the achievement of the formulated targets (effect evaluation). Most of the concept’s measures were found to be evidence-based and aligned with eight out of 10 areas of the World Health Organization (WHO) policy portfolio. Out of the 14 tasks, 7 were rated as achieved, and 7 as partly achieved. Ten years after the concept’s adoption, alcohol consumption seems to have declined by about a third and alcohol is conceptualized as a broad risk factor for the population’s health in Russia.