Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Dec 12, 2023
Open Peer Review Period: Dec 12, 2023 - Dec 27, 2023
Date Accepted: May 8, 2024
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Geographic disparities in Access to Assisted Reproductive Technology Centers in China: spatial accessibility evaluation
ABSTRACT
Infertility is emerging as a significant public health issue, particularly in China. The travel time and associated costs frequently impose a substantial burden on Chinese infertility patients. In this study, we utilized a web-based path planning engine to assess and visually represent the accessibility and travel costs to Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) centers across mainland China. The distribution of ART centers in China is quite uneven. 76.8% of the population and 63.5% of the residential points were not accessible to an ART center within 1-hour. 76.8%, 39.5%, 70. 5%, 70. 5% and 41.7% of China's population can reach nearest ART center for Artificial Insemination by Husband, In Vitro Fertilization and Embryo Transfer, Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection, and Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis in an hour respectively. The resulting "Travel Time Map to ART centers in China" can help to estimate whether individuals will seek ART healthcare when it is needed, as well as providing an evidence base for efficiently distributing limited ART resources to underserved populations both now and in the future.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.