Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Mar 27, 2025
Date Accepted: Sep 30, 2025
The PrEP Pharmacy Reach Study: Protocol for the creation of maps to visualize the impact of expanding access to HIV prevention services through pharmacies
ABSTRACT
Background:
Inequities in pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) uptake span across populations and geographic regions. The accessibility of pharmacies positions them as a vital resource for expanding PrEP access and supporting uptake and adherence through HIV prevention programs.
Objective:
The aim of this study is to identify, map, and describe the potential impact of expanding PrEP access and HIV prevention services to pharmacies across the United States.
Methods:
We will create local and state maps to help visualize the impact of expanding access to HIV prevention services through pharmacies. Data will be obtained from three main data sources for pharmacy locations, PrEP-prescribing locations, and HIV cases per 100,000 persons. We will geocode pharmacies and PrEP-prescribing locations with Google application programming interfaces (APIs) via the ggmap package in R. Maps will be created by overlaying several different layers of general maps and aggregated data including base maps, choropleth maps, dot density maps. To quantitatively examine the potential impact of expanding HIV prevention services, we will calculate a PrEP facility-to-need ratio (PfnR) as the total number of facilities (PrEP-prescribing or pharmacies) divided by the number of HIV cases per 100,000 persons.
Results:
Overall, maps depicted far greater accessibility to local pharmacies compared to PrEP-prescribing facilities. When taken within the context of HIV cases per 100,000 persons, pharmacies were more prevalent than PrEP-prescribing facilities in areas with higher HIV caseloads.
Conclusions:
This work has critical implications for state and national policies focused on avenues to increase PrEP access and uptake and subsequently reduce HIV transmission in their regions.
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