Facilitators and Barriers to Health-Seeking Behaviours among Filipino Migrants: Inductive Analysis to Inform Health Promotion

Table 2

Analysis of themes in the written responses.

Themes	Definition and examples	Percentage of response	Exemplar comments
Facilitators
Individual factors	Health promoting behaviours, knowledge about health, current health needs or conditions, goals and motivation, and having the time and income and social support network	273 (54%)	“Healthy eating habits, physical workouts, and God’s blessings.” (OL872, female, 53); “Balance diet, exercise, rest, fun” (HC988, female, 50)
Cultural factors	Spiritual beliefs in Divine assistance, alternative cultural therapies, positive cultural attitudes, and cultural beliefs and practices	50 (10%)	“My belief that God will take care of me” (HC958, male, 80); “Filipinos poor but happy/joking/musical attitude” (OL789, female, 39)
Environmental factors	Facilities available to support physical activity such as parks and walking tracks, availability of good quality and affordable food, and less pollution in the environment	106 (21%)	“Seeking expert medical advice is not as expensive as that in the Philippines. More fresh fruit & vegetables for good nutrition within reach by average Australian” (OL670, female, 56)
Health service access	Access to Medicare subsidised services such as GP consultations, GP quality, availability and accessibility of health resources, and supportive health policies	76 (15%)	“Health information is readily available from various sources even if there is almost nil information written in Filipino or any of the Philippine languages” (OL586, male, 43); “Being able to have an easily accessible health system is the biggest factor in being able to take care of my health” (OL969, Female, 28)
Barriers
Individual factors	Lack of motivation, negative personal characteristics (for example, laziness), lack of knowledge, lack of financial resources, and language difficulties; Current health status that limits mobility, ageing, and unhealthy behaviours; Competing priorities like work, family, and social commitments	485 (66%)	“Money. dental care and eye care are expensive” (OL621, female,42); “I’m always scared to see a doctor because it’s hard for me to communicate, I don’t know who or where the right person to talk to” (HC 903, female, 81); “Balancing time taking care of the family and taking care of myself (taking time out to go to the doctor/physio/chiro/etc) is difficult” (OL580, male, 30)
Cultural factors	Differences in cultural values, cultural norms and traditions, and difficulties in language expressions	86 (12%)	“Looking after the family and working at the same time (the absence of domestic helpers specifically)” (OL907, female, 42); “By not understanding the life in this country. Australia people are different” (HC977, female, 48)
Environmental factors	Environmental factors such as climate, lifestyle in Australia, and abundance of and easy access to fast food	72 (10%)	“Junk food being readily available & so cheap.” (OL786, female, 53); “sudden change of weather/temperature” (OL 802, female, 63)
Health service access	Lack of access to services such as after-hours GPs and lack of knowledge about the health system	36 (5%)	“If you don’t have relatives here in Australia, it is sometimes difficult to take care of our health especially you don’t know how to access the health system and also if you have difficulty in understanding the language” (OL776, female, 55)

 ^*52 (7%) reported no barrier in taking care of their health.