<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0">
  <teiHeader>
    <fileDesc>
      <titleStmt>
        <title type="main" level="a">Access to emergency care services and inequalities in living standards: Some evidence from two Italian northern regions</title>
        <author>
          <persName n="1" ref="https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9854-7885" type="ORCID">
            <forename>Andrea</forename>
            <surname>Marino</surname>
            <placeName type="affiliation">ISTAT, Italian National Institute of Statistics, Italy</placeName>
          </persName>
          <persName n="2" ref="https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8926-7128" type="ORCID">
            <forename>Marco</forename>
            <surname>Pesce</surname>
            <placeName type="affiliation">ISTAT, Italian National Institute of Statistics, Italy</placeName>
          </persName>
          <persName n="3">
            <forename>Raffaella</forename>
            <surname>Succi</surname>
            <placeName type="affiliation">ISTAT, Italian National Institute of Statistics, Italy</placeName>
          </persName>
        </author>
        <respStmt>
          <resp>This is a section of <title>ASA 2022 Data-Driven Decision Making</title>(DOI: <idno type="DOI">10.36253/979-12-215-0106-3</idno>) by </resp>
          <name>Enrico di Bella, Luigi Fabbris, Corrado Lagazio</name>
        </respStmt>
      </titleStmt>
      <publicationStmt>
        <publisher>Firenze University Press</publisher>
        <pubPlace>Firenze</pubPlace>
        <date when="2023">2023</date>
        <idno type="DOI">https://doi.org/10.36253/979-12-215-0106-3.24</idno>
        <availability>
          <p>Available for academic research purposes</p>
          <p>Open Access</p>
          <p>Copyright Author(s)</p>
          <licence source="text" target="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode">
            <p>Content licence CC BY 4.0</p>
          </licence>
          <licence source="metadata" target="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode">
            <p>Metadata licence CC0 1.0</p>
          </licence>
        </availability>
      </publicationStmt>
      <sourceDesc>
        <p>This is original content, published for academic research purposes</p>
      </sourceDesc>
    </fileDesc>
    <encodingDesc>
      <appInfo>
        <application version="2.2" ident="Booksflow">
          <desc>Digital edition XML powered by Booksflow</desc>
        </application>
      </appInfo>
    </encodingDesc>
    <profileDesc>
      <abstract xml:lang="en">
        <p>Rapid access to emergency medical care is crucial in reducing the implications of negative health events in terms of both mortality and disability. Thus, in a well-designed health system the geographical distribution of emergency care services should be able to minimize the share of people whose access time lies beyond critical thresholds. In spite of this, statistical information measuring accessibility to emergency care services at a highly disaggregated level is unavailable in Italy. This paper makes a step in filling this gap, by providing geographically detailed estimates of accessibility in two northern regions, Liguria and Lombardia. To do so, we use three data sources: 1) georeferenced population data measured at the currently most possible detailed level (census enumeration areas, CEAs) from the 2011 Population Census; 2) open data on location of emergency care services; 3) crowdsourced data on road travel distances. Elaborating these data with an efficient algorithm based on open source routing machine provides us with a clear mapping of particularly disadvantaged areas. We find that in 2013 the population share whose access time to emergency care services lies beyond a critical –and policy relevant- threshold of 60 minutes is fairly limited (about 0.1% in both regions). Regional differences emerge when setting lower thresholds. We briefly discuss how accessibility may have evolved in recent years, based upon some conjecture on population dynamics at the CEA level and updated information on emergency care centers. Finally, we analyze how differences in accessibility are related to a set of characteristics describing the population’s living conditions. Different results emerge. In particular, older and less educated people in Liguria face significantly lower access to emergency care. Overall, our results suggest that spatial differences in accessibility -within and between regions- should be considered a relevant determinant of health inequality.</p>
      </abstract>
      <textClass>
        <keywords>
          <list>
            <item>emergency care accessibility</item>
            <item>health inequalities</item>
            <item>efficient routing algorithms on open (big) data</item>
          </list>
        </keywords>
      </textClass>
    </profileDesc>
  </teiHeader>
  <text>
    <body>
      <p>It is available online at https://doi.org/10.36253/979-12-215-0106-3.24<ref target="https://doi.org/10.36253/979-12-215-0106-3.24" /></p>
      <div>
        <listBibl>
          <head>References</head>
          <bibl n="111962">Arcaya M.C., Arcaya A.L., Subramanian V. (2015). Inequalities in health: definitions, concepts, and theories. Global Health Action, 8(1).</bibl>
          <bibl n="111963">Bruzzi S., Ivaldi E., Santagata M. (2022). Measuring regional performance in the Italian NHS: Are disparities decreasing ? Social Indicators Research. 159, pp. 1057-1084.</bibl>
          <bibl n="111964">Dufour I., Chouinard M.C., Dubuc N., Beaudin J., Lafontaine S., Hudon C. (2019). Factors associated with frequent use of emergency-department services in a geriatric population: a systematic review. BMC Geriatrics, 19:185.</bibl>
          <bibl n="111965">Garattini L., Badinella Martini M., Zanetti M. (2022). The Italian NHS at regional level: same in theory, different in practice. The European Journal oh Health Economics. 23, pp. 1-5.</bibl>
          <bibl n="111966">Hart J.T. (1971). The inverse care law. The Lancet. 297(7696), pp. 405-412.</bibl>
          <bibl n="111967">Kisiala W., Racka I., Suszynska K. (2022).  Population Access to Hospital Emergency Departments: The Spatial Analysis in Public Health Research. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health, 19(3), 1437.</bibl>
          <bibl n="111968">Lilley R., et al. (2019). Geographical and population disparities in timely access to prehospital and advanced level emergency care in New Zealand: a cross-sectional study. BMJ Open, 9.</bibl>
          <bibl n="111969">Luxen D., Vetter C. (2011). Real-time routing with OpenStreetMap data. Proceedings of the 19th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems.</bibl>
          <bibl n="111970">Marmot M. (2005). Social determinants of health inequalities. Lancet, 365(9464), pp. 1099-104.</bibl>
          <bibl n="111971">Pesce M., Succi R. (2016). L’accessibilit&amp;#224; geografica dei servizi di pronto soccorso e le condizioni socio-economiche della popolazione- Poster presented at the 2016 MiLes Conference, Milan,</bibl>
          <bibl n="111972">Salvucci G., Lombardo G. (2016). Molise quotidianamente resiliente, analisi demografiche in una prospettiva gis. Conferenza ESRI Italia 2016. Conference paper available at the web address: https://www.esriitalia.it/images/pdf/conferenza2016/GianluigiSalvu</bibl>
          <bibl n="111973">Salvucci G., Lombardo G. (2017). Il ritardo che costa la vita: analisi dell’accessibilit&amp;#224; ai pronto soccorso. Conferenza ESRI Italia 2017. Conference paper available at the web address: https://www.esriitalia.it/images/pdf/conferenza2017/GianluigiSalvucci</bibl>
          <bibl n="111974">Silva K., Padeiro M. (2020). Assessing inequalities in geographical access to emergency medical services in metropolitan Lisbon: a cross-sectional and ecological study. BMJ Open, 10.</bibl>
          <bibl n="111975">Tang X., Deng Y., Yang H., Tian F., Li Y., Pan J. (2021). Spatial accessibility to emergency care in Sichuan province in China. Geospatial Health, 15(2), pp. 274-284.</bibl>
          <bibl n="111976">Tolpadi A., et al. (2022). National travel distances for emergency care. BMC Health Services Research, 22, 388.</bibl>
        </listBibl>
      </div>
    </body>
  </text>
</TEI>