Understanding the Regional and Local Inequities in Primary Health Services Provided in Turkey Through Geo-Information Technology

Keywords: Primary Health Services, Availability, Accessibility, Equity, GIS
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 56

Abstract

Primary Health Care Services (PHCS) is defined as “the basic health service provided to the individuals and families in a society in ways that will be accepted by the general public, with their full participation, in return for a financial price that can be met by the country and communities”. To maintain a well-planned national health system successfully, it is necessary to develop and implement policies that will ensure the continuity of the qualitative and quantitative quality of services by regularly measuring the inclusiveness and adequacy of the existing system. This study aims to examine the temporal development of PHCS in Turkey, to determine the changes in the adequacy and accessibility of services at the national and regional level to understand the potential inequities in the provision of PHCS across the country. Thus, it is aimed to establish a monitoring infrastructure based on geo-information technologies to evaluate the spatial distribution and adequacy of health services based on the open and officially published data based on NUTS regions annually by the Turkish Statistical Institute through open-source geo-information technologies (QGIS and Geoserver). The evaluations made by using the decision support system that enables spatial inquiry and analysis, outlined the regional inequalities in the provision of PCHS in Turkey have been improved since the beginning of the 2000s, and the necessity of developing policies to eliminate the service deficiencies in the central and eastern regions of the country.