Nearly half of counties in the United States contain at least one “pharmacy desert,” where there’s no retail pharmacy within 10 miles, a new study reports.

“As pharmacies close, more and more Americans are left without easy access to medications,” said senior investigator Dr. Timothy Pawlik, chair of cancer research at Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The most vulnerable Americans — those with low incomes, less education, a lack of health insurance — are most likely to be living in a pharmacy desert, researchers added.

“We found that patients in counties with higher social vulnerabilities and fewer primary care providers were up to 40% more likely to reside in a region with a pharmacy desert,” Pawlik added in a university news release.

For the study, researchers used a publicly available map to track the location of all pharmacies in the United States.

They found that nearly 46% of the 3,143 counties in the continental United States had at least one pharmacy desert.

Counties with more pharmacy deserts also had more vulnerable residents and fewer primary care doctors.

People in these pharmacy deserts were more likely to have trouble getting prescription medication and health care services, researchers found.

The findings were published Aug. 23 in the journal JAMA Network Open.

“These findings highlight how disparities compound the lack of access to basic health care, and how it can lead to many people not taking their prescribed medications and having worse health outcomes, especially for chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension,” Pawlik said.

More information

The University of Southern California has more about pharmacy deserts.

SOURCE: Ohio State University, news release, Aug. 23, 2024

Source: HealthDay