Table 1.

The antecedents of health-seeking behavior

Antecedents	Supporting references
3–1: Social factors	➢ Social networks [20, 21] and families [22] have solid roles in decision making for seeking health.
	➢ Number of other sick people and children under 5 years old in the family [22] and birth order of children [44].
	➢ Family size [14, 44]
3–2: Cultural factors	➢ Cultural beliefs about health which lead to self-care as well as using home remedies and consultation [13, 16, 19, 35, 37, 47, 51–53] as one of the barriers to health-seeking behavior
	➢ Gender inequalities exist in all communities and social classes and have negative effects on women health [13, 16, 38, 49, 54], women autonomy [17, 55] and men’s dominant role [13, 20]
	➢ Cultural preferences [15, 16]
	➢ Traditional interventions and professional attitude [37, 41, 45]
	➢ Superstition, rumors and legends [37]
	➢ Fear of stigma [45]
	➢ Previous and current perception of disease [30, 45]
	➢ Understanding the value of health [38]
	➢ Cultural taboos [51]
	➢ Negative cultural experiences such as pressure to succeed, win or physical violence [44]
	➢ Expectations of aging [12, 22, 39, 41, 56, 57]
	➢ Absence of the head of household or other key decision makers [54]
	➢ Head of household’s awareness, occupation and level of education [15, 41, 46, 49]
	➢ Ethnicity [16, 22, 56]
	➢ Marital status [22, 36]
	➢ Denial of disease, especially by women [45].
3–3: Economic Factors	➢ Family income [14, 16, 17, 20, 22, 23, 38, 41, 42, 44, 47, 51, 56]
	➢ Treatment and commute costs [13, 19, 20, 57]
	➢ Having insurance [16, 22, 51]
3–4: Disease pattern and issues related to health services	➢ Physical access to health services [12–17, 19–23, 41, 51]
	➢ Distance to health service center [14, 46, 58]
	➢ Poor performance of health services [13, 58]
	➢ Availability of drugs [13, 17, 19, 51, 58]
	➢ Can buy OTC medications without or with consulting a pharmacist [19, 47, 51] Expected quality of services [11, 15, 50]
	➢ Pluralism or existence of different health systems in a cultural setting [23, 35, 49]
	➢ Attitude toward health personnel [13, 41]
	➢ Perceived severity of illness [13, 22, 41, 42]
	➢ Knowledge and duration of illness [22]
	➢ Lack of suitable referral system [23, 32]