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Barriers to occupational and environmental medicine services in the southeastern United States
Elizabeth S Safran1, Laurence P Cohen, Lee S Caplan
1Prevention Research Center, Morehouse School of Medicine, 720 Westview Drive, Atlanta, GA 30310, USA.
Objectives:
We sought to determine whether low-income and minority populations in the Southeast face barriers to access to occupational and environmental medicine (OEM) services.
Methods:
Access to OEM services was defined as the presence of an OEM physician in a county or the proximity of a clinic in the Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics network to a county.
Results:
Counties with higher percentages of low-income, all non-white minority, and African-American populations in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi were more likely to be farther away from an AOEC clinic. Counties with higher percentages of low-income populations were less likely to have an OEM physician. However, the percentages of minority and African-American populations in these counties were not associated with the presence of an OEM physician.
Conclusion:
Both low-income and minority populations in the Southeast face barriers to OEM services.
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