Background: There are 8 dominant ethnics in 5 most populated districts in West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. The variety of the etnnics might affect the healthcare-seeking behavior as they perform different culture, beliefs, employment status, as well as education background.

Objective: Our study aims to observe the association between variants of ethnics and healthcare-seeking pattern and behavior in five most populated Districts in West Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia namely Alas, Utan, Labuhan Badas, Plampang, and Sumbawa Districts.

Materials and Methods: A structured questionnaire was adapted according to the International Questionnaire to Measure Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (I-CAM-Q) and used to collect quantitative data among 712 participants in five most populated districts of West Nusa Tenggara Province from April to June 2018. Data analysis was conducted by using SPSS Statistics version 22.

Results: Dominant ethnic living in five most populated districts consists of Bajo, Bugis, Sasak, Samawa, Sumbawa, Lombok, Jawa, and Bima. Healthcare-seeking behavior of ethnic Bajo is the most diverse amongst the other ethnics, consisting medical doctor visit, acupuncture visit, traditional herbal medicine consumption, masseuse visit, and shaman visit with the distribution rate between 22% to 38%. While other dominant ethnic such as Sumbawa relies on the traditional herbal medicine (32.4%) and medical doctors (27.5%) as well as acupuncture medication (27.6%). Ethnic Sasak and Samawa relies their healthcare solution more to shaman with rate of 21.1% and 31% respectively. The rest of ethnics including Jawa, Bugis, Lombok, and Bima might rely on self-medication as the rate of healthcare-seeking behavior is very low, below than 6%.

Conclusion: We perform that visitor ethnics including Jawa and Bugis might rely on self medication to treat their health problems. Meanwhile the origin ethnics such as Sumbawa, Bajo, Sasak, and Samawa relies more to traditional medicine and alternative or complementary medicine. This pattern might be influenced by beliefs, culture, employment status, and education background from each ethnic.

Key words: Ethnic, Sumbawa, Bajo, West Nusa Tenggara, Health-seeking behavior