An investigation of health information needs and use of healthcare services among people with asylum seeking background living in Norway

Abstract

Over the course of the last few decades, the Nordic countries are facing a change in their population structure, with a growing number of immigrants including people with asylum-seeking and refugee backgrounds. Almost three million people have moved to the Nordic countries in the last decade (Nordic Welfare Centre, 2017). For example, in Norway the number of asylum seekers for 2015 was 31,150 and the number of refugees for 2021 was 46,042 (Macro-trends, 2022; Statista, 2022). However, it should be noted that these individuals (asylum seekers and refugees) have diverse cultural and ethnical backgrounds, which means they may have different approaches toward seeking health information or healthcare services in their host country (Ahmadinia et al., 2021). Providing adequate and timely health information services for these people is one of the main challenges of the Nordic healthcare system (Haj-Younes et al., 2022). Therefore, a primary step to overcome this challenge is to understand what health-related information and healthcare services these individuals might need. This study aims to address this research gap by investigating their information seeking behaviour from the perspective of cultural and ethnical background. Health information-seeking behaviour and healthcare-seeking behaviour are two main key terms in this study. Health information-seeking behaviour refers to any situation in which an individual needs or uses any health-related information, while healthcare seeking behaviour refers to any activity undertaken by an individual who perceived himself to have a health concern, or to be sick, for the purpose of finding an appropriate remedy (Lalazaryan and Zare-Farashbandi, 2014; Ward et al., 1997).