Historical and current development tendencies of medical tourism in Latvia, economic and geographical accessibility of Latvia for medical tourists, the high acknowledgement by the European Parliament Committee on Transport and Tourism on the potential of Latvia of becoming one of the largest medical tourism destination points, allow us to evaluate the potential for medical tourism among the priority countries for Latvia. Unfortunately, the lack of further analysis of potential limits the development of medical tourism strategy and monitoring. The research goal: determination of export potential of medical tourism services in the priority countries for Latvia. The research showed that there is a potential in every of the given countries: in Norway – rehabilitation and insert of acrylic implants; in Sweden – endovenous laser surgery and eyelid surgery; in Finland – rehabilitation and breast enlargement; in Ireland – rehabilitation and eyelid surgery; in Great Britain – rehabilitation and eyelid surgery. Results of the SWOT analysis indicated that in order to reach the export goals the existing drawbacks to the provision of medical tourism services in Latvia have to be averted while amplifying the use of the comparative advantages of Latvia.

Resorts in the Republic of Lithuania are residential areas with natural healing factors (mineral water, healing mud, health-friendly climates, recreational areas and water bodies) and a special infrastructure enabling them to use these factors. Currently, there are 4 resorts in the country: Birštonas, Druskininkai, Neringa and Palanga. The purpose of this article is to carry out an analysis of the anthropogenic landscape of the resorts of the Republic of Lithuania in 2007-2018. During the preparation of the article, the following scientific methods were used: literature analysis, determination and evaluation of the current situation, grouping method, comparison method, analytical and statistical analysis methods, logical analysis, graphical method. The analysis showed that the anthropogenic landscape of the three resorts increased: in Druskininkai – by 362.65 ha or 18.17%, in Neringa – by 113.43 ha or 52.78%, in Palanga – by 190.74 or 15.09%. The anthropogenic landscape of Birštonas has decreased by 41.11 ha or 5.03%. Over the past decades, with the intensification of anthropogenesis and its accompanying urbanization, the importance of the natural environment has become more and more understood, and landscape research, which is associated with the assessment of naturalness and its problems, is becoming more and more relevant.

Recent developments in politics and economy has created additional challenges for medical institutions with lack of medical personnel, transportation from rural areas to medical institutions. Very often, there is a difference between medical services in urban and rural areas. In research is often mentioned that male and female persons have different evaluations on their health situation. The aim of the paper is to prepare research based recommendations for possible steps for public administrators to support availability of medical services in urban and rural areas. Tasks of the current research: analysis of theoretical findings reflected in scientific publications and discussion of research results, analysis of tendencies of self-perceived health status of population in Latvia, analysis on possible differences between gender as in scientific publications is often mentioned that female and male persons have different evaluations, analysis of health self-evaluations between inhabitants in rural and urban territories and possible differences in evaluations for persons with different employment status. Representative data from EUSILC, different statistical analysis methods and statistical indicators are used: indicators of descriptive statistics, crosstabulations, testing of statistical hypotheses with t-test and analysis of variance – ANOVA, chi-square test, as well as correlation analysis. Research results confirm that self-perceived health status in Latvia are higher in rural areas and higher health self-esteem evaluations were made by female persons.