Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, NY, United States of America.
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, United States of America.
BMC Health Serv Res. 2024 Apr 15;24(1):471. doi: 10.1186/s12913-024-10901-8.
The accessibility of pharmacies has been associated with overall health and wellbeing. Past studies have suggested that low income and racial minority communities are underserved by pharmacies. However, the literature is inconsistent in finding links between area-level income or racial and ethnic composition and access to pharmacies. Here we aim to assess area-level spatial access to pharmacies across New York State (NYS), hypothesizing that Census Tracts with higher poverty rates and higher percentages of Black and Hispanic residents would have lower spatial access.
The population weighted mean shortest road network distance (PWMSD) to a pharmacy in 2018 was calculated for each Census Tract in NYS. This statistic was calculated from the shortest road network distance to a pharmacy from the centroid of each Census block within a tract, with the mean across census blocks weighted by the population of the census block. Cross-sectional analyses were conducted to assess links between Tract-level socio demographic characteristics and Tract-level PWMSD to a pharmacy.
Overall the mean PWMSD to a pharmacy across Census tracts in NYS was 2.07 Km (SD = 3.35, median 0.85 Km). Shorter PWMSD to a pharmacy were associated with higher Tract-level % poverty, % Black/African American (AA) residents, and % Hispanic/Latino residents and with lower Tract-level % of residents with a college degree. Compared to tracts in the lowest quartile of % Black/AA residents, tracts in the highest quartile had a 70.7% (95% CI 68.3-72.9%) shorter PWMSD to a pharmacy. Similarly, tracts in the highest quartile of % poverty had a 61.3% (95% CI 58.0-64.4%) shorter PWMSD to a pharmacy than tracts in the lowest quartile.
The analyses show that tracts in NYS with higher racial and ethnic minority populations and higher poverty rates have higher spatial access to pharmacies.
药店的可达性与整体健康和幸福感有关。过去的研究表明，低收入和少数族裔社区的药店服务不足。然而，文献在发现地区收入水平或种族和民族构成与获得药店服务之间的联系方面并不一致。在这里，我们旨在评估整个纽约州（NYS）的药店的区域空间可达性，假设贫困率较高且黑人和西班牙裔居民比例较高的普查区的空间可达性较低。
我们计算了 2018 年每个 NYS 普查区的药店人口加权平均最短路网距离（PWMSD）。该统计数据是从药店中心到普查区每个普查块的最短路网距离计算得出的，其中普查块的平均值通过普查块的人口加权。进行了横断面分析，以评估普查区社会人口特征与普查区 PWMSD 到药店之间的联系。
总体而言，纽约州普查区的平均 PWMSD 到药店的距离为 2.07 公里（SD=3.35，中位数为 0.85 公里）。PWMSD 到药店的距离越短，与普查区的贫困率越高、黑人和非裔美国人（AA）居民比例越高、西班牙裔/拉丁裔居民比例越高以及受教育程度较高的居民比例越低有关。与黑人/AA 居民比例最低的四分位数普查区相比，黑人/AA 居民比例最高的四分位数普查区的 PWMSD 到药店的距离缩短了 70.7%（95%CI 68.3-72.9%）。同样，贫困率最高的四分位数普查区的 PWMSD 到药店的距离比贫困率最低的四分位数普查区短 61.3%（95%CI 58.0-64.4%）。
分析表明，纽约州的普查区拥有较高的少数族裔人口和较高的贫困率，因此药店的空间可达性更高。
