Abstract
Abstract Communicable diseases pass all the geographical and political boundaries as a result of globalization, population movement, and international trade regime. Every year, the WHO publishes a long list of new disease outbreaks. Thus, COVID-19 is not the last and the only disease that requires adjustment in health behavior and public participation. During an epidemic/pandemic, different countries design new and different public health measures to protect their own population. However, people may choose to follow these new policies or ignore them. Choosing to ignore them jeopardizes the effect of new public health policies and counteracts all the efforts of healthcare providers. This theoretical paper attempts to provide a theoretical foundation for personal health behaviors during an epidemic/pandemic by providing evidence from the current COVID-19 outbreak. This paper covers the main theoretical aspects from the epidemiological transition decision-making process, health belief model, optimism bias, conspiracy theory and trust, stigmatization and super-spreader, and social determinates of health in three levels (from individual level to social and contextual level), which can allow us to understand personal health behavior during epidemics/pandemics.
Highlights
Communicable diseases pass all the geographical and Emerging and re-emerging diseases are always political boundaries as a result of globalization, considered as one of the main global health threats, for population movement, and international trade regime.which there is generally no treatment or vaccinationEvery year, the WHO publishes a long list of new [1]
Another factor that can have an effect on health behavior is the duration of the pandemic or epidemic and the perception that the risk of infection can decrease over time [18]. d
It needs to be noted that migrants and ethnic minorities are not a homogeneous population and they may act differently during an emergency [59]. Another personal health protective behavior variable that needs to be taken into consideration during epidemics/pandemics is the risk factor that contributes to severity of illness
Summary
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