From health behavior to care
Anthropological perspectives on care-seeking and caregiving
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24219084 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Anuoluwapo Ajibade (0000-0003-4915-5698) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Pages | 100880 |
| Publication date | 2026-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | SSM - Qualitative Research in Health (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2667-3215 • E-ISSN: 2667-3215 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.ssmqr.2026.100880 |
| OpenAlex | W7218640279 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 61 |
This conceptual narrative review examines what is gained and lost when care-seeking and caregiving are approached primarily through health behavior theories. Models such as the Health Belief Model, the Theory of Reasoned Action, the Theory of Planned Behavior, the Integrated Behavioral Model, Social Cognitive Theory, and Social Network Theory have made important contributions to the study of health behavior by clarifying how perceived risk, severity, benefits, barriers, intentions, norms, self-efficacy, and social relationships shape action. Yet, when these models organize the analysis of care-seeking without sustained attention to the wider relations and conditions under which care unfolds, or when their constructs are extended to caregiving, they may foreground the individual actor, discrete decision-making, and behavior change while leaving other dimensions of care less visible. Drawing on medical anthropology, critical medical anthropology, political economy, structural violence, and the anthropology of care, this paper argues for an expansion from health behavior to care. Care-seeking and caregiving are not simply individual behaviors but relational, moral, material, and temporally unfolding practices shaped by explanatory models, plural therapeutic systems, household obligations, gendered labor, poverty, chronicity, and institutional constraint. An anthropological care framework repositions behavioral theories by examining how care-seeking and caregiving unfold within interpretive, material, relational, and moral conditions shaped by wider structures. The proposed framework also offers a recursive account in which care actions can modify understanding, resources, relationships, and obligations, shaping what kind of care becomes possible next.
anthropology of care · care seeking · caregiving · Health behavior · patient-provider relationship · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Cultural Competency in Health Care · Nursing care and research
Social Networks and Health
The Quest for Therapy in Lower Zaire
The Health Belief Model
Caregiving as moral experience
Gender, ageing and carework in East and Southern Africa
Health Promotion by Social Cognitive Means
Historical Origins of the Health Belief Model
The theory of planned behavior
Caregiving
Intra-household Variation in Pathways to Care for Epilepsy and Mental Disorders in Eastern Uganda
On Integrating Social Cognitive and Social Diffusion Theories
Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture
The Cultural Context of Health, Illness, and Medicine
The Health Belief Model and Sick Role Behavior
Pathologies of Power
The role of theory in HIV prevention
What Research in Motivation Suggests for Public Health
A Psychological Approach To Developing Principles of Community Organization
The health seeking process
Self-efficacy
Accessing diabetes care in rural Uganda
Explanatory Models and Illness Experience of People Living with HIV
Theoretical Perspectives for Explaining Infant Mortality in the Third World
Social Cognitive Theory
Social Medicine for Social Justice
Martin Fishbein's Legacy
Anthropological and socio-medical health care research in developing countries
Reinventing medical anthropology
Chagas, Risk and Health Seeking among Bolivian Women in Catalonia
Health Care Delays and Social Suffering Among Indigenous People with Diabetic Foot Complications in Mexico
Theories of reasoned action and planned behavior as models of condom use
Violence, Peace, and Peace Research
Medicine as an Ethnographic Category
The Differential Use of Medical Resources in Developing Countries
The Hierarchy of Resort in Curative Practices
On the Rationality of Decision-Making Studies
Therapy Management
Disease Etiologies in Non-Western Medical Systems
Vita
Social Networks and Health
Health, Risk, and Resilience
Just One Thing after Another
Transnational Disorders
Susto Etiology and Treatment According to Bolivian Trinitario People
Taming the nafs
An Anthropology of Structural Violence
Pathogenic Policy
The social life of health behaviors
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |