Accessibility, equity and health care: review and research directions for transport geographers

Research at the confluence of accessibility, equity and health is flourishing. And yet, there is only slow and modest progress in terms of improving the spatial and temporal accuracy of measuring accessibility and equity of accessibility to health care services. This paper critically reviews the latest methodological and empirical research developments and trends in this area through a transport geography lens. More specifically, this paper discusses recent accomplishments in terms of modeling accessibility and provides a systematic and comprehensive literature review of their application in empirical studies of health care delivery. Based on this literature review a research agenda is put forward, identifying knowledge gaps that transport researchers can help to fill. These knowledge gaps pertain to the need for more spatially disaggregated, individualized and temporally-aware accessibility metrics, more sophisticated geocomputational tools to operationalize such metrics and improved measurement of equity considerations in empirical research. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.