Search results

The health challenges that characterise most of the migrants' urban slums raises a lot of concern for their well-being. Health-seeking behaviour becomes an important step towards maintaining a healthy life. The importance of contextual issues is necessary to help meet specific community health needs and programmes. Therefore, this study aims to bridge the knowledge gap by investigating health-seeking behaviour disparity among rural–urban labour migrant's slum dwellers before and after migration to the urban slums of Madina in the Greater Accra Region, Ghana.

The author used explanatory sequential approach of research investigation. Questionnaire and interview guides were used to collect data from the respondents however, in the absence of an existing reliable sampling frame, the various communities were selected by the use of cluster sampling proportional to size. At the second stage, a simple random sampling was used to select the various household heads. A total of 241 questionnaires were retrieved from the respondents representing a response rate of 100%. The author used purposive sampling technique to conduct eight in-depth interviews and six key informants' interviews.

The author found various discrepancies in many of the activities that could fulfil substantial health-seeking behaviour in the slum as compared to migrant's places of origin. The reason for coming to the slum amidst many settlements needs and low education background are the factors that accounted for this. This study, therefore, contradicts the proposition held by the health belief model. It is, therefore, important to note that contextual issues are key, in this case, rural–urban migrant slums present a different dynamic that must be taken into account when designing health programmes for such settings.

Many, if not all the, studies on health-seeking behaviour have focused on urban slums without taking into account urban migrants' slums. Such a failure to take into account the variations of the health needs of migrants' urban slum settings can eventually lead to a mismatch of health programmes meant to address their challenges. Therefore, this study brings to the fore such variations that must be taken into account when designing health programmes. The study also indicates that even with the same people, there were disparities in terms of health-seeking behaviour in the slum and at places of origin.

Immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees living in Europe face a number of challenges in accessing or using health information and healthcare services available in their host countries. To resolve these issues and deliver the necessary services, providers must take a comprehensive approach to better understand the types of health information and healthcare services that these individuals need, seek and use. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop that comprehensive approach.

In this paper, a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed publications was performed, with 3.013 articles collected from various databases. A total of 57 qualifying papers on studies conducted in Europe were included in the review after applying the predefined inclusion and exclusion requirements, screening processes and eliminating duplicates. The information seeking and communication model (ISCM) was used in the analysis.

The findings revealed that while many health information and healthcare services are accessible in Europe for immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees, many of these individuals are unaware of their existence or how to access them. While our findings do not specify what health-related information these groups need, use or seek, they do suggest the importance and value of providing mental health, sexual health and HIV, as well as pregnancy and childbirth information and services. Furthermore, according to our results, health information services should be fact-based, easy to understand and raise awareness about healthcare structure and services available in Europe for this vulnerable population.

This study has a range of practical implications, including (1) highlighting the need for mental health and behavioural health services and (2) stressing the value of addressing cultural context and religious values while investigating (health) information seeking of people with foreign background.

This is one of the first studies to systematically review and examine the behaviour of immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees in relation to health information and healthcare services in the European context.

Several studies have described health-seeking behaviour within the context of various diseases, the health status and age group. However, knowledge on patient health-seeking behaviour in the use of public and private hospitals and socio-demographic characteristics in developing countries is still scarce. This paper examines the influence of socio-demographic behavioural variables on health-seeking behaviour and the use of public and private health facilities in Ghana.

Quantitative research approach uses the modified SERVQUAL dimension as a data collection tool. Descriptive statistics with Pearson's chi-square test were conducted to determine the relationship between socio-demographic behavioural variables and health-seeking behaviour of patients using public and private hospitals.

The results showed that there is a significant relationship between the socio-demographic characteristics (sex, marital status, education, level of income) and the health-seeking behaviour of patients in regard to the utilisation of public and private health facilities (p < 0.000).

There is a significant relationship between patients' socio-demographic variables and their choice and utilisation of public and private healthcare services. This information is of value to policy makers so that they have an idea on the socio-demographic behavioural variables that influence patients' health-seeking behaviour.

Little is understood about the self-described barriers that recently released HIV-infected prisoners face when accessing healthcare and adhering to medications. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate these barriers from the perspective of released prisoners themselves.

A qualitative assessment using 30 semi-structured interviews explored individuals’ self-reported acute stressors and barriers to health-seeking during community re-integration for recidivist prisoners. Leventhal’s Self-Regulation Model of Illness (SRMI) is applied to examine both structural and psychological barriers.

The SRMI explains that individuals have both cognitive and emotional processing elements to their illness representations, which mediate coping strategies. Cognitive representations of HIV that mediated treatment discontinuation included beliefs that HIV was stigmatizing, a death sentence, or had no physiological consequences. Negative emotional states of hopelessness and anger were either acute or chronic responses that impaired individuals’ motivation to seek care post-release. Individuals expressed feelings of mistrust, fatalism and denial as coping strategies in response to their illness, which reduced likelihood to seek HIV care.

Interventions for HIV-infected individuals transitioning to the community must incorporate structural and psychological components. Structural support includes housing assistance, employment and health insurance, and linkage to mental health, substance abuse and HIV care. Psychological support includes training to enhance agency with medication self-administration and HIV education to correct false beliefs and reduce distress. Additionally, healthcare workers should be specifically trained to establish trust with these vulnerable populations.

Health-seeking behaviors (HSB) for infertility are influenced my multiple factors. The Behavioral Model of Health Services Utilization states that enabling resources and predisposing factors are essential in predicting HSB, and this study examined the relationship between state-level mandates that insurance providers cover infertility service on the rates of HSB for infertility among a nationally representative sample of women.

This study used data from the National Survey of Family Growth, identified 15 states with state-level mandates as enabling resources, and used sociodemographic characteristics as predisposing resources. Using discrete-time event-history analyses, and retrospective accounts of infertility HSB, these variables were examined to determine if residing in a state with state-level insurance mandates would increase the likelihood of HSB for infertility.

Results indicated an impact of state-level mandates on HSB for infertility. Specifically, the rates of HSB for infertility were higher among women residing in states with state-level mandates.

A limitation in this research stems from a data restriction that forced identifying a place-of-residence before or after 2000. To overcome this, multiple analyses, and a nested model comparison were tested to measure the effect of state-level mandates on HSB.

The comparative analysis of the rates of HSB for women residing in states with state-level mandates has not been considered before, and the results provide further detail into the infertility experience for women and their partners.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the behavior diversities that exist among young millennials’ subgroups in ways they seek health-related information.

The authors ran several sets of analyses on the 2012–2014 US Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) Data using Stata. The population was stratified into four specific subgroups based on their gender, ethnicity—blacks, Hispanics and whites—immigration status, college status—whether they were enrolled in a program of study at the time of the survey. The outcome variables were sources of health information including print (books/magazines/brochures), traditional media (Radio/TV), internet, family/friends/co-workers and health professionals. The independent variables were gender, ethnicity, educational status and immigration status. The authors utilized the appropriate sample weight derived by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development so the findings can be generalized to the populations. The analysis included several descriptive statistics and χ² test of independence.

Despite similarities, young adults’ health seeking behavior is complex influenced by gender, ethnicity, immigration status and education. The results indicated that while the internet is the primary source of health-related information for all young adults, there are subtle differences in utilizing other available resources. For example while more educated young adults seek help from their family members, the less educated peers use the media to obtain health-related information. Ethnicity has also an effect on young adults’ information seeking behavior. The number of Hispanics and blacks that obtain their information from traditional media is significantly higher than their white counterparts.

This study has several limitations. First, the authors did not consider the effect of young adults’ digital literacy skills, problem solving skills and numeracy skills on their health seeking approach. Including these cognitive skills could reveal key information about young adults approach to information seeking that is not apparent by race, ethnicity and gender only. Another limitation of this study is the lack of the ability to claim causation, PIAAC data are designed strictly for cross-sectional analysis.

Although, behaviors often do not change simply by presenting information, trying to change behavior without improving individuals’ understanding of the issue by providing accurate information is likely to fail. Providing standardized health-related information sources that are accessible to all is vitally important. The results indicate that while the majority of young adults use the internet as their primary source of information only a few percentage of young adults seek information from health professional. Consequently, there is a need for an easily accessible and standardized online health-related source of information.

Healthcare facilities and health related industries have the resources and the ability to develop a reliable infrastructure that could potentially provide reliable information that is easy to understand and navigate for adults with a variety of literacy and skills to use. Perhaps adopting the Universal Design for Learning approach and providing information that is accessible to a variety of individuals regardless of their education, learning skills and language skills. Flexible learning resources provided within a standard infrastructure accessible to all can help individuals find trustworthy and consistent information that they can trust.

Despite the unique characteristics of the millennials and the profound change in the way young adults seek information, there is a paucity of research on the ways young adults seek health-related information. Most existing literature is based on locally developed surveys and convenient sampling with limited reliability and validity information. Consequently making a sweeping statement based on their findings is considered as hasty generalization. The PIAAC, on the other hand, is a nationally representative data, extensively examined for its validity and reliability.

This study aims to investigate the health-care-seeking behaviour and practices of West African migrants who reside and operate in Wa, Ghana, as itinerant retailers.

The study was cross-sectional and used the quantitative research approach. The analysis was done on a target population comprising 122 itinerant immigrant retail traders in Wa, Ghana. Fisher’s exact test and logistic regression were used to analyse the data.

Malaria was the commonest disease among them. Five in ten of the migrants preferred to report malaria episodes to a private health facility than to a government facility. Significant associations were identified between four dimensions (health facility, self-medication, home remedy and consult others) of health-seeking behaviour, and some background characteristics. The main reason why migrants prefer government health facilities was because of their better health personnel. They self-medicated because of easy accessibility of over-the-counter medicine shops. Also, when ill, the migrants usually consulted family members who would be in a position to take them home when their ailment worsens.

Snowball sampling was used to select the respondents which could potentially lead to a sample that is not fully representative of the population in general.

Studies concerning migration and health in Ghana have been focused on internal migrants. Yet, minority immigrant traders equally encounter adverse health conditions but limited studies have been conducted to espouse their health-seeking behaviour. This study imperatively contributes to the subject matter that has limited literature in the country.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made humanity contend with the negative footprint of its activities in which social justice, ecological integrity and economic stability are compromised. This study aims to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the operation and management of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Nigeria.

Multiple case study research design was used in the study with interviews from 25 senior-level management staff of NGOs.

The analysis revealed that COVID-19 impacts NGOs both negatively and positively. Dominant among the negative impacts are a decline in health-seeking behaviours, low programme implementation, increased cost and wastages resulting from PPE, transition to virtual meetings, a decline in capacity building and staff burnout/pressure. However, some positive impacts include increased efficiency through the use of virtual innovations, peer-to-peer intervention through the establishment of networks, flexibility and prompt adaptation to the crisis, prudent management of available resources, etc. This research contributes to theory and practice.

Conducting this research and recruiting participants at the height of COVID-19 in Nigeria, in adherence to the prevention guidelines, constituted a considerable limitation to the study.

Although the identified impact could be useful in framing operational policies and guidelines, the study highlights a salient future outlook with policy implications for both the governance of NGOs and the facilitation of sustainable development goals by the government.

Although researchers continue to explore the impact of COVID-19, none has considered the NGO sector, especially in developing countries, and with a focus on providing evidence-backed resilience practices for the future.

This study explores the health-seeking process for queer and/or trans people, and factors involved in their healthcare negotiations and decisions to seek care. The data included 20 semi-structured interviews of people who identify as queer and/or trans in the southeastern United States. Qualitative analysis was conducted using constructivist grounded theory to inductively analyze accounts of healthcare events, behaviors, and experiences of queer and/or trans people. Participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 57, with a majority identifying as trans/gender nonconforming (65%) and those remaining identifying as queer, cisgender individuals (35%). Both queer and trans identities can overlap, therefore, I use the term “queer and/or trans.” Categories generated through the coding process were as follows: (1) mental health concerns, (2) negotiating gendered and heteronormative assumptions, and (3) significance of participants creating a bed of knowledge. My analysis asserts that these data indicate that queer and/or trans participants manage not just healthcare decisions, but the hopelessness attached to seeking this type of help.

The objective of this paper is to examine the health seeking strategies of Latin American migrants in London.

The paper draws on a small case study analysis conducted with Latin American migrants in London and relevant stakeholders.

The paper highlights that even where Latin American migrants do have entitlements to use the NHS, a series of informal barriers limits their access. As a consequence many employ a range of transnational health‐seeking strategies in order to seek resolution to their health problems. These findings repeat those identified in other studies and point to the need to gain a better understanding of migrant's exclusion and marginalisation in relation to formal health care providers. At the same time, the findings point to the lack of long‐term resolution many migrants experience in relation to their health care needs, raising important questions about health inequalities.

Latin Americans represent a hugely diverse and heterogeneous group of migrants who have differing values and belief systems in relation to health care. A more detailed study is necessary in order to fully understand their health seeking behaviour in a UK context.

Latin Americans represent a “new migrant” population in the UK and are considerably under‐researched compared to more established migrant communities. At the same time they are an unrecognised group and are therefore excluded from many policy debates. This paper seeks to address this lack of knowledge.