The spatial distribution of urban pharmacies.

Pharmacists are thought to play a central role in providing information and advice on health to lower income and other socially disadvantaged groups. However, recent evidence suggests that social biases exist in the spatial distribution of urban pharmacies. Such biases would severely limit the accessibility of the poor and the nonwhite to pharmacy services. To test the general nature of this evidence, we used multiple regression techniques to assess the simultaneous influence of several ecological and socioeconomic variables on the location of pharmacies in Pittsburgh and Omaha. After controlling for the influence of physicians, hospitals, commercial activity, population, and other variables thought to affect pharmacy location, we were unable to detect any evidence of a direct association between pharmacy location and the socioeconomic or demographic (other than total population) characteristics of areas in either city.