HEALTH CARE SEEKING BEHAVIORS IN RURAL, SOUTHERN, AFRICAN-AMERICAN ADULTS.
Contributors: University of South Carolina.
Published: 1993
Number of pages: 228
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Health Sciences, Public Health.
Description: When compared to the general U.S. population, alarming discrepancies in health status and health care utilization exist for rural and African American populations. These groups have less contact with health care providers, despite having higher rates of chronic disease. The ability to improve health care delivery and ultimately to improve health depends as much on understanding the context within which the process of seeking care occurs as it does on medical knowledge and health policy. The purpose of this study was to identify, describe, and provide a theoretical analysis of the process of seeking health care in rural, southern, African American (RSA) adults.

Twenty-two adults, aged 20 to 71, participated in formal, unstructured, taped interviews. Data were transcribed verbatim and analyzed according to the constant comparative method of Grounded Theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). A substantive theory of the four-staged process of seeking health care emerged. Stage I is Recognizing Something Unusual and denotes a realization that something different is happening with one's body or mind. Stage II is Evaluating Something Unusual and refers to both thinking and doing activities done in response to recognizing something unusual. The doing activities include taking care of self--doctoring on self, praying, and seeking advice. The thinking activities include evaluating the severity, persistence, familiarity, and one's personal experience with something unusual. Riding It Out is a strategy allowing these activities to occur. Stage III--Choosing an Option refers to making a choice regarding seeking health care while juggling the barriers of paying for health care, being afraid, not knowing the system, believing in God, interacting with health care personnel, and finding a ride. Stage IV is Seeking Care. The sources of health care revealed were mainstream providers and the alternative sources of root doctors, truthsayers, and God. Influential cultural and contextual factors were beliefs regarding the origins of disease and illness, and managing health and illness--receiving support, being healthy and staying healthy, giving it to God, and navigating the system.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-07, Section: B, page: 3553.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA, 1993.

School code: 0202.