Guiding placement of health facilities using multiple malaria criteria and an interactive tool
Abstract Background Access to healthcare is important in controlling malaria burden and, as a result, distance or travel time to health facilities is often a significant predictor in modelling malaria prevalence. Adding new health facilities may reduce overall travel time to health facilities and ma...
Published in: | Malaria Journal |
---|---|
Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
BMC
2021
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-021-03991-w https://doaj.org/article/38ca299237c645abbb9f4478862530b6 |
id |
ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:38ca299237c645abbb9f4478862530b6 |
---|---|
record_format |
openpolar |
spelling |
ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:38ca299237c645abbb9f4478862530b6 2023-05-15T15:14:20+02:00 Guiding placement of health facilities using multiple malaria criteria and an interactive tool Kok Ben Toh Justin Millar Paul Psychas Benjamin Abuaku Collins Ahorlu Samuel Oppong Kwadwo Koram Denis Valle 2021-12-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-021-03991-w https://doaj.org/article/38ca299237c645abbb9f4478862530b6 EN eng BMC https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-021-03991-w https://doaj.org/toc/1475-2875 doi:10.1186/s12936-021-03991-w 1475-2875 https://doaj.org/article/38ca299237c645abbb9f4478862530b6 Malaria Journal, Vol 20, Iss 1, Pp 1-13 (2021) Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine RC955-962 Infectious and parasitic diseases RC109-216 article 2021 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-021-03991-w 2022-12-31T04:20:28Z Abstract Background Access to healthcare is important in controlling malaria burden and, as a result, distance or travel time to health facilities is often a significant predictor in modelling malaria prevalence. Adding new health facilities may reduce overall travel time to health facilities and may decrease malaria transmission. To help guide local decision-makers as they scale up community-based accessibility, the influence of the spatial allocation of new health facilities on malaria prevalence is evaluated in Bunkpurugu-Yunyoo district in northern Ghana. A location-allocation analysis is performed to find optimal locations of new health facilities by separately minimizing three district-wide objectives: malaria prevalence, malaria incidence, and average travel time to health facilities. Methods Generalized additive models was used to estimate the relationship between malaria prevalence and travel time to the nearest health facility and other geospatial covariates. The model predictions are then used to calculate the optimisation criteria for the location-allocation analysis. This analysis was performed for two scenarios: adding new health facilities to the existing ones, and a hypothetical scenario in which the community-based healthcare facilities would be allocated anew. An interactive web application was created to facilitate efficient presentation of this analysis and allow users to experiment with their choice of health facility location and optimisation criteria. Results Using malaria prevalence and travel time as optimisation criteria, two locations that would benefit from new health facilities were identified, regardless of scenarios. Due to the non-linear relationship between malaria incidence and prevalence, the optimal locations chosen based on the incidence criterion tended to be inequitable and was different from those based on the other optimisation criteria. Conclusions This study findings underscore the importance of using multiple optimisation criteria in the decision-making process. This ... Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles Arctic Malaria Journal 20 1 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
op_collection_id |
ftdoajarticles |
language |
English |
topic |
Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine RC955-962 Infectious and parasitic diseases RC109-216 |
spellingShingle |
Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine RC955-962 Infectious and parasitic diseases RC109-216 Kok Ben Toh Justin Millar Paul Psychas Benjamin Abuaku Collins Ahorlu Samuel Oppong Kwadwo Koram Denis Valle Guiding placement of health facilities using multiple malaria criteria and an interactive tool |
topic_facet |
Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine RC955-962 Infectious and parasitic diseases RC109-216 |
description |
Abstract Background Access to healthcare is important in controlling malaria burden and, as a result, distance or travel time to health facilities is often a significant predictor in modelling malaria prevalence. Adding new health facilities may reduce overall travel time to health facilities and may decrease malaria transmission. To help guide local decision-makers as they scale up community-based accessibility, the influence of the spatial allocation of new health facilities on malaria prevalence is evaluated in Bunkpurugu-Yunyoo district in northern Ghana. A location-allocation analysis is performed to find optimal locations of new health facilities by separately minimizing three district-wide objectives: malaria prevalence, malaria incidence, and average travel time to health facilities. Methods Generalized additive models was used to estimate the relationship between malaria prevalence and travel time to the nearest health facility and other geospatial covariates. The model predictions are then used to calculate the optimisation criteria for the location-allocation analysis. This analysis was performed for two scenarios: adding new health facilities to the existing ones, and a hypothetical scenario in which the community-based healthcare facilities would be allocated anew. An interactive web application was created to facilitate efficient presentation of this analysis and allow users to experiment with their choice of health facility location and optimisation criteria. Results Using malaria prevalence and travel time as optimisation criteria, two locations that would benefit from new health facilities were identified, regardless of scenarios. Due to the non-linear relationship between malaria incidence and prevalence, the optimal locations chosen based on the incidence criterion tended to be inequitable and was different from those based on the other optimisation criteria. Conclusions This study findings underscore the importance of using multiple optimisation criteria in the decision-making process. This ... |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Kok Ben Toh Justin Millar Paul Psychas Benjamin Abuaku Collins Ahorlu Samuel Oppong Kwadwo Koram Denis Valle |
author_facet |
Kok Ben Toh Justin Millar Paul Psychas Benjamin Abuaku Collins Ahorlu Samuel Oppong Kwadwo Koram Denis Valle |
author_sort |
Kok Ben Toh |
title |
Guiding placement of health facilities using multiple malaria criteria and an interactive tool |
title_short |
Guiding placement of health facilities using multiple malaria criteria and an interactive tool |
title_full |
Guiding placement of health facilities using multiple malaria criteria and an interactive tool |
title_fullStr |
Guiding placement of health facilities using multiple malaria criteria and an interactive tool |
title_full_unstemmed |
Guiding placement of health facilities using multiple malaria criteria and an interactive tool |
title_sort |
guiding placement of health facilities using multiple malaria criteria and an interactive tool |
publisher |
BMC |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-021-03991-w https://doaj.org/article/38ca299237c645abbb9f4478862530b6 |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
Arctic |
genre_facet |
Arctic |
op_source |
Malaria Journal, Vol 20, Iss 1, Pp 1-13 (2021) |
op_relation |
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-021-03991-w https://doaj.org/toc/1475-2875 doi:10.1186/s12936-021-03991-w 1475-2875 https://doaj.org/article/38ca299237c645abbb9f4478862530b6 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12936-021-03991-w |
container_title |
Malaria Journal |
container_volume |
20 |
container_issue |
1 |
_version_ |
1766344794013958144 |