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ABSTRACT
Evaluating the inequity of healthcare accessibility across demographic groups in the post-COVID era is of critical importance for an aging society like Japan – it helps to achieve better social equity via distributing healthcare resources in health planning and policy making. Our study contributes to the first post-covid evaluation of multi-modal healthcare accessibility in Tokyo, Japan, the most populated metropolis in the world. A further novelty goes to the multi-dimensional examination of the inequity of healthcare accessibility (i.e. hospitals) by public transit, driving and walking – the horizontal inequity across urban space and the vertical inequity across three demographic groups (the young, adult and elderly) through network analysis, spatial accessibility analysis and inequity indexing. We find that low healthcare access areas mainly appear in the peri-urban space as well as regions less covered by public transit. Compared to the adult group, the elderly group experiences significant inequity of healthcare access particularly in the peri-urban areas where driving is the dominant transport mode to access healthcare facilities. We provide timely evidence to the Japanese government and health authorities to have a holistic and latest understanding of multi-modal healthcare access across different demographic groups in the post-COVID era.
Acknowledgements
The measures of healthcare accessibility are publicly accessible via the project public repository https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Healthcare_access_Tokyp_Japan/20222007
Authors’ contributions
Siqin Wang: Conceptualization; Methodology; Software; Validation; Formal analysis; Investigation; Writing – Original Draft; Visualization; Project administration.
Yukio Sadahiro: Investigation; Validation; Data Curation; Writing – Review & Editing; Funding acquisition; Supervision.
Consent for publication
All authors consent for publication.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Ethics approval and consent to participate
This study did not receive nor require ethics approval, as it does not involve human & animal participants.
Data availability statement
Health accessibility data generated by this study are publicly accessible via the project public repository: https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Healthcare_access_Tokyp_Japan/20222007.