Abstract
Our study details the creation of a series of national open source low-level geographical measures of accessibility to health-related features for Great Britain. We create 14 measures across three domains: retail environment (fast food outlets, gambling outlets, pubs/bars/nightclubs, off-licences, tobacconists), health services (General Practitioners, pharmacies, dentists, hospitals, leisure centres) and the physical environment (green space and air quality). Using the network analysis process of Routino, postcode accessibility (km) to each of these features were calculated for the whole of Great Britain. An average score for each domain was calculated and subsequently combined to form an overall Index highlighting ‘Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards’. We find the most accessible healthy areas are concentrated in the periphery of the urban cores, whilst the least accessible healthy areas are located in the urban cores and the rural areas. The open data resource is important for researchers and policy makers alike with an interest in measuring the role of spatial features on health.
Highlights
Background & SummaryThe trends of geographical variations in health have long been studied by the research community
We focus on three main categories of geographical determinants of health. (1) access to retail outlets, (2) access to health services and (3) environmental quality
The AHAH indicators were divided into three main domains: retail environment, health services, and physical environment
Summary
The trends of geographical variations in health have long been studied by the research community. To assess the extent that geographical context still matters for explaining spatial patterns in health outcomes, it is important to have data measuring the location of environmental features hypothesised to impact health. Researchers and policy officials often don’t have the expertise available to them to readily process such data Accessibility to these data can be restricted and often consumer data on retail outlets are either not available or privately owned. Our project aims to develop health related geographic indicators at high spatial resolution for Great Britain to minimise the barriers that researchers and policy makers face in investigating the spatial and environmental determinants of health[13]. The strength of our index lies in moving beyond examining each indicator alone, towards developing a composite measure of neighbourhood quality
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