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Geospatial Analysis of Refugee Access to Primary Care Physicians in San Antonio, Texas

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Abstract

This study investigated refugee access to primary care physicians (PCP) in San Antonio, Texas. Catholic Charities of San Antonio (CCSA) is the primary agency responsible for connecting refugees to a PCP. Data on refugees were collected from CCSA between May to September 2013 (N = 547). PCPs information was accessed at the Texas Medicaid and Healthcare Partnership (TMHP) website. The 2SFCA method was used in geographic information systems (GIS) to analyze the ratio of healthcare providers relative to refugees within varying walking distances. The highest concentration of accessibility was at 20 min distance in the Medical Center area. The highest concentration of accessibility at all walking distances were also in the Medical Center area. The univariate and multivariate analyses did not result in significant findings for the association between demographic variables and the accessibility scores. These findings recommend building new and more relationships with healthcare providers where PCPs access is low.

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Acknowledgements

The team sincerely thanks the Catholic Charities of San Antonio for their work and help in conducting this research.

Funding

This study was not funded by any source.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Texas School of Public Health, San Antonio Campus, TX, USA

    Nicole J. Wong

  2. Epidemiology and Biostatistics program, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Box 453064, Las Vegas, NV, USA

    Lung-Chang Chien

  3. Department of Public Health, New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY, USA

    Hasanat Alamgir

Authors
  1. Nicole J. Wong
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  2. Lung-Chang Chien
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  3. Hasanat Alamgir
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Contributions

NW designed, collected and organized data, conducted GIS mapping analysis and writing. HA supervised and contributed to the writing. LC supervised the GIS analysis.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hasanat Alamgir.

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Conflict of interest

Authors have not received research grants from any source and have no conflict of interest. This study proposal has undergone review by the University of Texas Health Science Center Committee for Protection of Human Subjects and the Institutional Review Board (HCS-SPH-13-0824).

Ethical Approval

This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors. This was a secondary data analyses and no individual identifier is there to identify the subjects.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was not necessary to obtain from all individual participants included in the study.

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Wong, N.J., Chien, LC. & Alamgir, H. Geospatial Analysis of Refugee Access to Primary Care Physicians in San Antonio, Texas. J Immigrant Minority Health 21, 1349–1355 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-018-00854-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-018-00854-6

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