Spatial Accessibility and User Travel Characteristics Influencing Utilization of Public Healthcare Facilities in Indian Rural District: A Case Study of Hapur District
摘要
Equity in health and healthcare is widely accepted as an essential function of public policy. Healthcare sector has seen the advantage of spatial analysis supported by GIS technologies and road networks. In rural regions, people experience distance barriers to healthcare facilities. Previous studies have emphasized physical reach as the primary determinant of access; however, scholars have overlooked the hierarchy of healthcare facilities that influence travel characteristics in the region. A comparison between user travel behavior and the benchmarking public guidelines is presented. A 2SFCA method is used as a general accessibility model using GIS to highlight hierarchy-wise coverage gaps in the region. The user survey was conducted at each hierarchy of facility in the district and the geographic location of all facilities was obtained by physically visiting all the facilities. The best- and least-performing blocks of Hapur district in terms of health accessibility are identified based on the spatial analysis. It is proposed to increase the number of facilities in the region or to increase the capacity of the existing facilities for better health outcomes.