Introduction The influx of Syrian refugees into Jordan presents an immense burden to the Jordanian health system, particularly in treating chronic health conditions. This study was undertaken to assess utilization of health services for chronic health conditions among Syrian refugees in non-camp settings. Methods A survey of Syrian refugees in Jordan was undertaken in June 2014 to characterize health seeking behaviors and issues related to accessing care for hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases, and arthritis. A cluster design with probability proportional to size sampling was used to attain a nationally representative sample of 1550 non-camp Syrian refugee households. Results Of 1363 cases with a chronic health condition diagnosis, 84.7% had received care in Jordan. Public facilities faced a heavy burden serving over half (53.9%) of care-seekers; the remainder received care in the private (29.6%) and NGO/charity (16.6%) sectors. Individuals with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the central region of Jordan and with arthritis had the lowest rates of care-seeking when compared to other regions and conditions. Overall, 31.6%of care-seekers had an out-of-pocket payment for the most recent careseeking event which averaged 18.8 USD (median = 0 USD), excluding cost of medications. Discussion Forced displacement presents major challenges to those with NCDs, which have the potential to seriously impact both the quality of life and life expectancy amongst refugees. NCD patterns among Syrian refugees indicate the importance of continuing support to public sector services in Jordan to adequately meet expanding needs and ensure appropriate prevention and control of priority NCDs. © 2016 Doocy et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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refugee multicenter study public health service health seeking behavior clinical trial Jordan Syrian Arab Republic medical fee human Health Behavior Refugees Respiratory Tract Diseases diabetes mellitus hypertension geographic distribution chronic disease arthritis quality of life cluster analysis health care cost Humans cardiovascular disease male private hospital female chronic respiratory tract disease social welfare Article health care utilization major clinical study Syrian health care quality Syria health care access Quality of Health Care sample size Delivery of Health Care non communicable disease health care delivery