The Role of Residential Segregation and Vulnerability on Potential Accessibility to Primary Care Services in Texas

Ramona Serban, University of Texas at San Antonio

A large literature on the influence of residential segregation on access to healthcare exists; however this work typically looks at small-scale settings, and rarely works using a population perspective. Additionally, residential segregation is also operationalized as a two-group difference in residential location. The purpose of this research is to determine the effect of multi-group residential segregation, SES, and type of place on spatial accessibility to primary care in Texas Counties, in 2011. Data for this study come from the Texas Medical Board (TMB) store, licensed physician database for 2011, the Census Bureau (American Community Survey - ACS) 5-year estimates for the Texas counties, and the 2010 Summary File 1 (SF1) at the tract level (Census, 2010). Two Step Floating Catchment Area method (2SFCA) will be used to calculate the spatial accessibility index while spatially autoregressive models will be used to analyze the effects of residential segregation on potential spatial accessibility.