Influencing factors of health seeking behavior among rural residents of Yanchuan County in Yan'an City

Objective To understand the health seeking behavior among rural residents of Yanchuan County in Yan'an City and to analyze its influencing factors. Methods From July 2017 to August 2017, we selected 552 rural permanent residents of Yanchuan County in Yan'an City by convenience sampling. All of them were investigated with the self-designed health seeking behavior questionnaire for rural residents. The binary Logistic regression was used to analyze the influencing factors of health seeking behavior among rural residents. Results When rural residents were ill, 224 (40.58%) rural residents bought medicines for treatment, 216 (39.13%) knew disease related knowledge and 352 (53.01%) rural residents attended rural cooperative medical care. Binary Logistic regression showed that the influencing factors of health seeking behavior of rural residents included ages, monthly income, attending insurance or new rural cooperative medical care, knowing disease related knowledge, diet rules and the proportion of vegetables and meats each meal. Conclusions Health conscious of rural residents is weak; the health seeking behavior is traditional, backward and negative; they lack knowledge on health, medical treatment, health care and emergency treatment and their medical insurance participation is inactive. Government sector should pay attention to health seeking behavior of rural residents, strengthen the development of rural doctor team and clinics in villages and towns, improve medical care system and rural cooperative medical care so as to solve the problems high cost and difficulty of getting medical service among rural residents. Key words: Cross-sectional studies; Health seeking behavior; Rural residents; Influencing factors