Access all areas? An area-level analysis of accessibility to general practice and community pharmacy services in England by urbanity and social deprivation
Open accessAbstract
Objectives: (1) To determine the percentage of the population in England that has access to a general practitioner (GP) premises within a 20 min walk (the accessibility); (2) explore the relationship between the walking distance to a GP premises and urbanity and social deprivation and (3) compare accessibility of a GP premises to that of a community pharmacy—and how this may vary by urbanity and social deprivation. Design: This area-level analysis spatial study used postcodes for all GP premises and community pharmacies in England. Each postcode was assigned to a population lookup table and Lower Super Output Area (LSOA). The LSOA was then matched to urbanity (urban, town and fringe, or village, hamlet and isolated dwellings) and deprivation decile (using the Index of Multiple Deprivation score 2010). Primary outcome measure: Living within a 20 min walk of a GP premises. Results: Overall, 84.8% of the population is estimated to live within a 20 min walk of a GP premises: 81.2% in the most affluent areas, 98.2% in the most deprived areas, 94.2% in urban and 19.4% in rural areas. This is consistently lower when compared with the population living within a 20 min walk of a community pharmacy. Conclusions: Our study shows that the vast majority of the population live within a 20 min walk of a GP premises, with higher proportions in the most deprived areas—a positive primary care law. However, more people live within a 20 min walk of a community pharmacy compared with a GP premises, and this potentially has implications for the commissioning of future services from these healthcare providers in England.
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Access to healthcare is lower in disadvantaged and marginalised communities, even in universal healthcare systems.
“Similarly, access to healthcare is lower in disadvantaged and marginalised communities-even in universal healthcare systems.32”
From The COVID-19 pandemic and health inequalities (2020) · cites this paper as [32]
The Conclusions (page unavailable) report the opposite pattern for the access this study measured: a higher proportion of people in England’s most deprived areas live within a 20-minute walk of a GP premises. The Discussion’s principal findings likewise say GP-premises accessibility was highest in the most deprived areas. The paper measures proximity to GP premises and pharmacies, not healthcare access in general or access among all marginalised communities. (LLM, conf=0.87)
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Research works printed but not linked: 14
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The COVID-19 pandemic and health inequalities
Bambra, C., Riordan, R., Ford, J., & Matthews, F. (2020) · Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health · doi:10.1136/jech-2020-214401 · Cited by 2,079 · see citing works
Self-citation
- Authors
- Todd, A., Copeland, A., Husband, A., Kasim, A., & Bambra, C.
- Affiliations
- Durham University (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Todd, Adam
- Venue
- BMJ Open
- Publisher
- BMJ
- Published
- 2015-05
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- e007328
- ISSN
- 2044-6055 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4431167
- OpenAlex
- W2159179396
- Cited by
- 162
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 18 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 18.37
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc
- Locations
- BMJ Open (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Durham Research Online (Durham University) (acceptedVersion, other-oa)
- Durham Research Online (Durham University) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Newcastle University ePrints (Newcastle Univesity) (cc-by-nc)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Transportation › Urban Transport and Accessibility
- Social Sciences › Health › Public Health and Social Inequalities
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis › Urban Green Space and Health
- Keywords
- community pharmacy, urbanity, social deprivation, Index of Multiple Deprivation, primary care, urban-rural differences, England
- MeSH terms
- Community Pharmacy Services, England, Health Services Accessibility, Humans, Policy Making, Poverty, Public Health, Residence Characteristics, Urban Population, Walking, General Practice
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