Minorities impacted most by pharmacy deserts

After so called food deserts — communities that lack access to fresh produce and other healthy foods — led some retailers to develop stores to fill this gap, the existence of a new type of desert with an equally devastating impact on the health of those living there is starting to emerge.

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Known as pharmacy deserts, these pockets in some major U.S. cities are characterized by the lack of drug stores, causing residents in these areas to have to travel much farther than others to get prescriptions filled, buy over-the-counter medications or visit the steadily increasing number of urgent care clinics found inside stores.



Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who last year identified the first of these areas, said pharmacy deserts are con tributing to health disparities that jeopardize many people’s well-being. For the most part, they said, those impacted by the dearth of pharmacies are minorities.



While their research focused solely on Chicago, where more than a million people are affected by the lack of pharmacies, the team said it had no doubt that the situation is the same in other areas.



Writing in the journal Health Affairs, the research team led by assistant professor Dima Qato said the emergence of pharmacy deserts poses a potential threat to public health and suggested that governments and the private sector explore ways to remedy the situation.



“Incorporating pharmacies in community health centers is one potential solution,” Qato wrote in an op-ed piece in the online publication Chicago Reporter a few weeks after his findings were published. “Another is to increase governmental oversight in the distribution of pharmacies across communities in the United States.”



In addition, he said, state and federal agencies could require pharmacy organizations to ensure that residents in every neighborhood have access to pharmacies, and the same analysis of local needs that is used to approve the construction of new hospitals should be extended to decisions about where to locate pharmacies.



“To overcome objections about excessive regulation, tax or other market-based incentives might also be used to encourage pharmacies to locate in underserved areas,” Qato said.