Geographical access to community pharmacies in British Columbia, Canada

The extent of the urban-rural disparity in community pharmacy access in British Columbia (BC), Canada is unknown. We sought to describe this geographical disparity by conducting a geographic information system analysis.

We used publicly available geospatial data on community pharmacy locations, road networks, and community boundaries. A complete list of pharmacies in BC and their addresses were downloaded in December 2024. For each pharmacy, we defined a 5-kilometre service area using the surrounding roads. For each geographic community, we counted the number of pharmacy service areas that intersected the community (i.e. the number of pharmacies that could be accessed by that community). Community-level characteristics such as resident population and urban status were summarised.

A total of 1,528 community pharmacies and 231 geographic communities were included in the analysis. All 115 medium/large urban communities were in accessible range of five or more pharmacies. The proportion of communities with this level of access (five or more pharmacies) decreased with increasing rurality: 17/22 small urban, 24/77 rural, and 0/17 remote communities. There were 14 remote communities (representing 75.9% of the remote population in BC) with access to either one or zero community pharmacies.

Using geographic information system analysis, we have shown the urban-rural disparity in community pharmacy access is evident.