Social Determinants of Pharmacy Deserts in Los Angeles County

AbstractAs medications are commonly used to prevent and mitigate chronic diseases and their associated complications and outcomes, limited geographic access to medications in communities that are already plagued with health inequity is a growing concern. This is especially important because low-income urban minority communities often have high prevalence and incidence of cardiometabolic and respiratory chronic conditions. Community pharmacy deserts have been established in Chicago, New York, and other locales. In part because the definition was originally adapted from the concept of food deserts, existing studies have either utilized the distance of 1  mile or greater to the nearest community pharmacy solely, or used distance along with the same predefined social indicator thresholds that define food deserts (i.e., income and vehicle ownership), to define and identify areas as pharmacy deserts. No full analysis has been conducted of the social d eterminants that define and characterize medication shortage areas within a given locale, even though medication and food are usually accessed independently. Therefore, to address this gap in the literature, this study was designed to identify all potential “pharmacy deserts” in Los Angeles Coun ty based on distance alone and then characterize them by their social determinants of health (SDOH) indicators. Geographic pharmacy deserts were identified as census tracts where the nearest community pharmacy was 1 mile or more away fro...
Source: Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research