Access to Primary Health Care: Does Neighborhood of Residence Matter?
Access to Primary Health Care: Does Neighborhood of Residence Matter?
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DOI：
10.1080/00045608.2012.685050
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发表时间：
2013-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Shah, Tayyab
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Bell, Scott;Wilson, Kathi;Shah, Tayyab
社区社会和物理环境有能力影响居民的健康和健康行为。在研究中仍未充分研究的一个社区特征是获得卫生保健资源。本研究考察了加拿大安大略省密西沙加市潜在（地理）获得初级卫生保健的机会。提出了一种改进的两步浮动集水区法，使其更适合局部相关的自然邻域单元的研究。考虑到人口和医生的若干空间和空间（即社会）特征，包括医生的原始数量、医生和患者使用的语言以及医生是否接受新患者，在密西沙加的每个社区衡量获得医疗保健的可能性。将社区水平的结果与人口普查区进行比较。分析结果表明，在所有空间和空间维度上，不同社区之间的潜在通道存在显著差异。与一般人群相比，语言少数群体和那些可能没有专门的家庭医生的人的可访问性大大降低。这项研究通过展示一种替代方法的效用，对自然地理社区内获得医疗保健的机会有了更全面的了解，从而对现有的社区和健康文献做出了贡献。
Neighborhood social and physical contexts have the ability to impact health and health behaviors of residents. One neighborhood characteristic that remains underexamined in the research is access to health care resources. This research examines potential (geographical) access to primary health care in the city of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. A modification of the two-step floating catchment area method that better suits the study of locally relevant natural neighborhood units is presented. Potential access to health care is measured in each of Mississauga's neighborhoods considering several spatial and aspatial (i.e., social) characteristics of the population and of physicians, including the raw abundance of physicians, languages spoken by physicians and patients, and whether physicians are accepting new patients. Neighborhood-level results are compared to census tracts. The results of this analysis reveal that potential access significantly differs between neighborhoods for all spatial and aspatial dimensions of access. Accessibility is considerably reduced for linguistic minorities and for those who might not have a dedicated family physician as compared to the general population. This research contributes to the existing body of literature on neighborhoods and health by demonstrating the utility of an alternative methodology for developing a more comprehensive understanding of access to health care within natural geographical neighborhoods.