Reasons and Factors for Avoiding Health Information among Health Services Providers and Recipients: A Scoping review

People sometimes avoid searching for or using health information. This study aimed to determine the reasons and factors for avoiding health information in health service recipients and health service providers.

In this scoping review, Cochrane, Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, EMbase and LISTA databases were searched. A total of 1901 studies were retrieved, and after removing duplicates and screening, finally 30 studies were entered into the review. The extracted data were categorized based on the objectives of the review and reported in a narrative form in tables.

The reasons for avoiding health information among health service recipients included reasons related to information, reasons related to the health system, and psychological reasons. The factors for avoiding health information among them were psychological factors, demographic factors, factors related to the health system, and factors related to information. Also, the reasons for avoiding health information among health service providers were information-related reasons and health system-related reasons. The factors for avoiding health information in them also included factors related to information, factors related to the health system, and psychological factors.

In this research, the reasons and factors for avoiding health information were categorized among the health services recipients and the providers of these services. Knowing these reasons and factors can provide a solution for health policymakers and medical librarians to design and plan health information services for health information avoiders suitably and improve the health information process.