Table 1 list 19 studies that have examined the extent to which reported experiences of discrimination can shape health care seeking and adherence behaviors. Some studies have focused on perceived discrimination in general while others have attended to perceptions of bias within the health care context. While perceptions of racism were unrelated to delayed seeking of treatment in a small study of African Americans with an acute myocardial infarction (Banks and Dracup 2006), it has been associated with delays or failure to seek treatment for less severe conditions in the U.S. (Facione and Facione 2007; Van Houtven et al. 2005; Wagner and Abbott 2007; Casagrande et al. 2007) and Sweden (Wamala et al. 2007a). However, the findings have not been uniform with discrimination unrelated to cancer screening (Dailey et al. 2007; Hoyo et al. 2005) and the use of preventive care (Fowler-Brown et al. 2006) in some studies. Perceived discrimination has also been associated with the failure to seek preventative services such as cholesterol testing, hemoglobin A1c testing and eye exams for diabetes and flu shots (Trivedi and Ayanian 2006)
