Does spatial accessibility of pharmacy services predict compliance with long-term control medications?

Background: Disadvantaged urban children with asthma are at high risk for undermanagement of their disease and poor compliance with inhaled corticosteroids (ICS).

Objective: To determine whether spatial accessibility (SA) of retail pharmacy services is associated with ICS compliance.

Methods: Caregivers of 137 urban high-morbidity asthmatic children attended a comprehensive intervention to improve asthma care and outcomes. Subsequent ICS compliance was determined at 1, 3, and 6 months. We modeled 18 measures of SA to 339 pharmacies using logistic regression and adjusting for numerous covariates.

Results: No relationships between SA and compliance were found.

Conclusions: In this group of disadvantaged urban children with severe asthma, compliance with ICS was not significantly associated with SA of retail pharmacy services.