Sasha Ramroop

The role community pharmacies play in healthcare is expanding in Ontario. Community pharmacies provide primary access to medicines and pharmaceutical services in a community. This study systematically examines geographic accessibility to over 1,500 community pharmacies in the Greater Toronto Area. The two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method and enhanced two-step floating catchment area method (E2SFCA) are used and compared to measure the spatial accessibility to pharmacies for the total population at dissemination area level. Aspatial factors are also explored by focusing on two population sub-groups, Seniors Aged 65+ Years and Infants and Children 0-9 Years in order to assess whether these high need populations disproportionately suffer from poorer access to pharmacies. An integrated Community Pharmacy Accessibility Map is created in order to explore the interaction between the aspatial and spatial components that affect the overall access to pharmacies. The results indicate that the majority of the GTA population lives within 15 minutes' drive time of at least one community pharmacy and the selected high need populations are readily accessible to these pharmacies. While the geographic access to community pharmacies in the GTA appears to be higher than the Ontario average in most high need areas, the main variations in accessibility appears to be between peripheral suburban and fringe areas.

Key words: spatial accessibility, community pharmacy, 2SFCA, E2SFCA, seniors, infants and children