Revealed versus potential spatial accessibility of healthcare and changing patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Timely access to healthcare is essential but measuring access is challenging. Prior research focused on analyzing potential travel times to healthcare under optimal mobility scenarios that do not incorporate direct observations of human mobility, potentially underestimating the barriers to receiving care for many populations.

Methods

We introduce an approach for measuring accessibility by utilizing travel times to healthcare facilities from aggregated and anonymized smartphone Location History data. We measure these revealed travel times to healthcare facilities in over 100 countries and juxtapose our findings with potential (optimal) travel times estimated using Google Maps directions. We then quantify changes in revealed accessibility associated with the COVID-1

SUBMITTER: Gligoric K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10624905 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature