Accessibility and GIS on Health Planning: An Approach Based on Location-Allocation Models

Abstract

The health system should be endowed with adequate accessibility levels to each functional population cohort it envisages to serve. In the case we are before higher levels of elder population, those health necessities increase. The location of health facilities should have in mind the demographic structure of each territory. Accordingly, the increase of elder people turns more needed public health policies addressed to mitigate social exclusion processes that can occur. Health public policies and planning practices should promote accessibility to primary health care facilities. In such a context, the location of those facilities and its accessibility have a particular importance. In this article, we envisage to evaluate the contribution of the location models to identify the more adequate locations of the health facilities and to check how the accessibility levels vary according to the results obtained from those models.