DEKALB, IL — A new study by NIU researchers shows that Americans’ real-world access to hospitals differs sharply from what traditional models have long suggested.
Yaxiong (Eric) Shao, a research associate of NIU’s Center for Government Studies
The research, led by Yaxiong (Eric) Shao, a research associate of NIU’s Center for Government Studies, and Distinguished Research Professor Wei Luo, has been published in the high-impact journal Computers, Environment and Urban Systems.
Their work represents one of the first national-scale analyses of “realized spatial accessibility” to hospitals.
“Realized accessibility tells the truth of what’s actually happening,” said Luo, a professor in NIU’s Department of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment. “We believe this is a significant contribution in both novelty and scale.”
Shao and Luo analyzed millions of aggregated movements that reveal how people actually reach more than 5,100 hospitals across the contiguous United States. Until recently, those real-world patterns were nearly impossible to measure nationwide.
The pair used large-scale, cellphone-based traffic data from SafeGraph, a massive, anonymized geospatial dataset. They compared those patterns to traditional “potential accessibility” models, which estimate access based on the assumption that all populations have equal healthcare demands.
The differences, they found, are dramatic.
“What we found is that the usual way of measuring access to care doesn’t tell the whole story. It assumes everyone in a census tract will use the nearest clinic, and that’s just not how people seek care,” Shao said. “When we looked more closely, we saw clear gaps, especially between racial groups and between urban and rural communities, in how easily people can actually reach health care.”
The study, “Realized Spatial Accessibility VS. Potential Spatial Accessibility in United States: A Case Study Based on Geospatial Big Data,” a part of Shao’s dissertation supervised by Luo, shows that hospital access is often much higher than traditional models indicate, especially in urban and suburban regions.
Distinguished Research Professor Wei Luo
Persistent gaps remain in many rural parts of the West and Northeast, the research shows.
The study also found racial disparities in low-access regions, noting that areas with low realized accessibility had disproportionately higher percentages of Black or African American residents.
Because potential-access scores are commonly used to designate medically underserved areas and shape funding decisions, Luo believes the study’s findings highlight the need to integrate big-data-based realized accessibility into public health planning.
“Our approach suggests that the realized accessibility based on SafeGraph data can not only help policymakers in making more informed decisions but also serve as a catalyst in improving health access equity,” Luo said.
Below is a video depiction of aggregated 2018 SafeGraph visit flows to hospitals across the United States:
Media Contact: Jami Kunzer
About NIU
Northern Illinois University is a student-centered, nationally recognized public research university, with expertise that benefits its region and spans the globe in a wide variety of fields, including the sciences, humanities, arts, business, engineering, education, health and law. The Wall Street Journal and CollegeNET recognize NIU as a leading institution for social mobility, or helping its students climb the socioeconomic ladder. Through its main campus in DeKalb, Illinois, and education centers for students and working professionals in Chicago, Naperville and Rockford, NIU offers more than 100 areas of study while serving a diverse and international student body.
