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Objective This study explored the illness experiences and healthcare-seeking behaviour of a cross-section of street dwellers of Dhaka City for designing a customised intervention.Design A qualitative exploratory study of a sample of street dwellers of Dhaka City.Setting Samples were taken from three purposively selected spots of Dhaka City with a high concentration of the target population.Participants Fifteen in-depth interviews and six informal group discussions with 40 street dwellers (≥18 years), and key informant interviews with service providers (n=6) and policymakers (n=3) were conducted during January–June 2019 to elicit necessary data.Primary outcome measures Qualitative narrative of illness experiences of the sampled street dwellers, relevant healthcare-seeking behaviour and experiences of interactions with health systems.Results We focused on three main themes, namely, reported illnesses, relevant healthcare-seeking behaviour and health system experiences of the street dwellers. Findings reveal that most of the street dwellers suffered from fever and respiratory illnesses in the last 6 months; however, a majority did not visit formal facilities. They preferred visiting retail drug shops for advice and treatment or waited for self-recovery. Formal facilities were visited only when treatment from drug shops failed to cure them or they suffered serious illnesses or traumatic injury. The reproductive-age women did not seek pregnancy care and most deliveries took place in the street dwellings. Lack of awareness, financial constraints and fear of visiting formal facilities were some of the reasons mentioned. Those who visited formal facilities faced barriers like the cost of medicines and diagnostic tests, long waiting time and opportunity cost.Conclusions The street dwellers lacked access to formal health systems for needed services as the latter lags far behind to outreach this extremely vulnerable population. What they need is explicit targeting with a customised package of services based on their illness profile, at a time and place convenient to them with minimum or no cost implications.

Introduction Not all factors that predict persistent pain and disability following whiplash injury are known. In particular, few physical factors, such as changes in movement and muscle behaviour, have been investigated. The aim of this study is to identify predictive factors that are associated with the development of persistent pain and disability following a whiplash injury by combining contemporary measures of physical function together with established psychological and pain-related predictive factors.Methods and analysis A prospective observational study will recruit 150 consecutive eligible patients experiencing whiplash-related symptoms, admitted to a private physiotherapy clinic in Spain within 15 days of their whiplash injury. Poor outcome will be measured using the Neck Disability Index (NDI), defined as an NDI score of 30% or greater at 6 months post injury. Candidate predictors, including demographic characteristics, injury characteristics, pain characteristics, self-reported psychosocial factors and physical factors, will be collected at baseline (within 15 days of inception). Regression analyses will be performed to identify factors that are associated with persistent neck pain and disability over the study period.Ethics and dissemination The project has been approved by the Ethics Committee of the province of Malaga, Spain (#30052019). The results of this study will be published in peer-reviewed journals.