Spatial accessibility of the population to urban health centres in Kermanshah, Islamic Republic of Iran: a geographic information systems analysis.

Geographic information systems (GIS) analysis has not been widely used in underdeveloped countries to ensure that vulnerable populations have accessibility to primary health-care services. This study applied GIS methods to analyse the spatial accessibility to urban primary-care centres of the population in Kermanshah city, Islamic Republic of Iran, by age and sex groups. In a descriptive-analytical study over 3 time periods, network analysis, mean centre and standard distance methods were applied using ArcGIS 9.3. The analysis was based on a standard radius of 750 m distance from health centres, walking speed of 1 m/s and desired access time to health centres of 12.5 mins. The proportion of the population with inadequate geographical access to health centres rose from 47.3% in 1997 to 58.4% in 2012. The mean centre and standard distance mapping showed that the spatial distribution of health centres in Kermanshah needed to be adjusted to changes in population distribution.