Disparities in Spatial Accessibility of Pharmacies in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Abstract

This study examines spatial accessibility of pharmacies in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Two popular geographic information systems (GIS)—based methods are compared: the proximity method uses the distance (travel time) from the nearest pharmacy, and the two‐step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method considers the match ratio between providers and population as well as the complex spatial interaction between them. The study indicates that disproportionally higher percentages of African‐Americans are in areas with shorter travel time to the nearest pharmacies than whites, but suffer from poorer accessibility measured by the 2SFCA method—that is, fewer pharmacies per 10,000 residents. Seniors, particularly those of seventy‐five years or older, tend to be disproportionally concentrated in areas that not only are closer to pharmacies, but also have more pharmacies per 10,000 residents. The two methods used in the study capture different elements in spatial accessibility: one being physically close to a facility and another adding the crowdedness in service. Both properties can be valuable for residents. The two may not always coincide with each other in spatial variability, as it is the case for racial disparity in our study area. However, when they do, as in the case for seniors, it may imply a true (dis)advantage for a demographic group in terms of both properties of spatial accessibility.

Disparity in Spatial Access to Public Daycare and Kindergarten across GIS-Constructed Regions in Seoul, South Korea

“…Spatial accessibility can be measured in a variety of ways, but in recent years, methods that can simultaneously account for both the demand and supply of facilities have been favored. This is to overcome the limitations of the traditional gravity model, i.e., the absence of effect by the amount of demand [33]. Among various methods, the two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) by Luo & Wang (2003) [42] has been the most widely adopted one, as it accounts for both proximity and availability of service providers.…”

Measuring and visualizing place-based space-time job accessibility

“…Hence, G2SFCA can be interpreted as the ratio between supply of jobs and demand of workers and is equivalent to Shen's measure. Due to its simplified structure and interpretation, G2SFCA is more often used in spatial accessibility studies, in particular, access to health care research (e.g., Guagliardo, 2004;Ikram et al, 2015;Luo and Wang, 2003).…”

Commuting Variability by Wage Groups in Baton Rouge, 1990–2010

“…A conventional pooled t-test may be considered to test the above null hypothesis (Wang and Feliberty, 2010). For easy implementation for a large number of repetitive tests, we choose to use a weighted OLS regression to test the hypothesis (Ikram et al 2015), where the tract population is used as the weight for appropriate adjustments in the error term. By doing so, a tract with more population is weighted heavier than one with less population.…”