Care Deserts | Pharmacies

Pharmacies are the unsung hero of hands-on healthcare services.

Where are the pharmacies?

On average, Americans see their pharmacist more often than a primary care physician. However, pharmacies are disappearing from the US. In particular, mom and pop pharmacies are dwindling in numbers. Pharmacies are not evenly distributed across the United States, with regions of the country where the density of pharmacies is lower than recommended for optimal service to the community. In fact, there are 177 counties with no pharmacies at all.    A lower density of pharmacies also leads to greater distances to be covered to reach one, an additional barrier to those with low transportation resources. The cause of these deserts is multifactorial but likely commercial: unlike hospitals, whose location and creation is regulated by overall plans, pharmacies remain outlets for large corporations and thus follow market regulations for their location i.e. places where customer traffic is maximized.    Ease of access to pharmacies benefits individual Americans, and the population as a whole. 

Click above to see where pharmacies are in the United States, or more importantly, where they are not.

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Now we know where pharmacies are, and aren't.

How is any given county impacted?

On the right is a map filled with valuable information. Want to know how many pharmacies are in a county? How many per 10,000 people? How many pharmacies within 10, 25, 50, or even 100 miles of the county border? Simply hover any county to find out. Or, click on a button to see the given range highlighted.

The reasons why a county may have few, or no, pharmacies are myriad but relate to population.

The base map indicates that the Great Plains significantly lacks pharmacies. With different layers of information we may be able to learn about some specific populations lacking care.

Now that South Dakota is selected click below to see an overlay of Native American reservations.

While the counties lacking pharmacies may not be one to one with the locations of reservations we do begin to get a greater picture of what population is impacted by the dearth of pharmacies.

What else is there?

Throughout the United States we see counties that have no pharmacies. While the majority of them are located in the Great Plains those counties located elsewhere might raise questions as to why they lack even a single pharmacy.

Do you see that great big white county in the center of Upstate? That is Hamilton County. Why might a county as large as Hamilton, in a state as populous as New York have no pharmacies?

Hamilton County is in the heart of  Adirondack Park , a part of New York's Forest Preserve. The park is a unique blend of public and private land that exists in 11 counties. Hamilton is the only county entirely consumed by the park.

The overlay shows the location of all national, state, and local parks (including wilderness areas, forests, and other protected regions).

We've only scratched the surface

For more in-depth analysis, including the dataset this article is based upon, visit our marketplace listing below, or contact us via our contact information at bottom.

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• Leverage machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other advanced algorithms to gain insights into their relationship between social determinants of health (SDOH) and global outcomes, health equity, disease transmission, and the economic risk from health emergencies.

• Provide curated visualizations of geospatial data analytics and innovative risk indices through our GeoHealth Platform to provide decision-makers with actionable risk insights.

• Global data mining from disparate sources within and outside the healthcare sector.

• Tailored datasets optimized for organizations' unique needs.

Contact

impact@hsr.health

Ajay K. Gupta

Founder & CEO, CISSP, MBA

Dr. Ram Peruvemba

Chief Medical Officer

Madeline Lynch

Marketing & PR Specialist

madeline@hsr.health

703-424-3655