Environment resilience and public health: Assessing healthcare's vulnerability to climate change in the San Francisco Bay Area

Tingting Chen, John D. Radke, Wei Lang and Xun Li

Growth and Change, 2020, vol. 51, issue 2, 607-625

Abstract: This study investigated the vulnerability of people's health to the impact of climate change on healthcare accessibility in the San Francisco Bay Area. The study developed spatial analysis models in ArcGIS with a high‐resolution elevation data set (1 m raster base map) and summarized the scenario assessments of the associations between healthcare and the populations vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The results reveal that 34.3% of low‐income households could reach hospitals in the baseline scenario. In the peak water level (PWL) (140) scenario, 33.3% of low‐income households were within 30 min of the nearest hospital. In the baseline scenario, hospitals were accessible to 35.9% of the general population, whereas in the PWL (140) scenario the percentage was slightly lower, with 35.1% having access to hospitals. Healthcare reform increased the accessibility of hospitals to low‐income households, and these populations had equal access in the PWL (140) scenario. However, access to healthcare is controlled by distance and other variables, including income, insurance, spatial distribution, and transportation mobility. The findings and implications of this study address the explicit recognition in strategic planning of the effects of climate change in adopting policies to benefit health in the future.

Date: 2020
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