Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation
8-2025
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph. D.
Department
Industrial Engineering
Degree Program
Industrial Engineering, PhD
Committee Chair
Bai, Lihui
Committee Member
Gerber, Erin
Committee Member
Saleem, Jason
Committee Member
Zhang, Sumei
Author's Keywords
Pharmacy accessibility; healthcare equity; pharmacy deserts; OCPA; conditional logit model; discrete event simulation
Abstract
Community pharmacies are essential components of the healthcare system, serving not only as points of medication access but also as providers of health consultations and preventive care. However, disparities in pharmacy access persist due to a combination of geographic, socioeconomic, and behavioral factors. This dissertation develops a comprehensive methodological framework to evaluate and improve accessibility to community pharmacies, integrating optimization, choice modeling, and discrete event simulation. First, we develop an Optimal Community-Pharmacy Assignment (OCPA) model to quantify geographic accessibility across a regional population network. The model minimizes risk-adjusted travel distances between population centers and pharmacies, incorporating social determinants of health (SDOH). We propose a new metric to identify “pharmacy deserts” and systematically detect underserved areas. Our analysis reveals that these deserts are concentrated in vulnerable communities, offering important insights for equitable resource allocation and facility planning. Second, we develop a conditional logit model, using consumer survey data, to estimate how pharmacy-specific attributes influence consumers’ pharmacy choice. This model quantifies the relative importance of geographic proximity and service-related factors. Our findings emphasize that non-geographic attributes play a critical role in pharmacy selection decisions, suggesting that improving customer experience is as essential as enhancing physical access. Finally, we construct a discrete event simulation model to evaluate geographical and functional accessibility under stochastic conditions. The model integrates mobile foot traffic data, real-world GIS travel networks, and vehicle availability to simulate pharmacy visits across a regional population. The model tracks key performance metrics, including travel time, in-pharmacy waiting time, queue length, and pharmacy utilization, to quantify both geographic and facility-level access outcomes. This dissertation provides methodological tools for evaluating pharmacy accessibility and supports data-driven planning. Future research could incorporate individual sociodemographic factors, customer arrival patterns, and transit wait times to support more detailed assessments of pharmacy access.
Recommended Citation
Alam, Md Morshedul, "Optimization and simulation models for integrating social determinants in assessing and optimizing the accessibility and efficiency of community pharmacy networks." (2025). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 4623.
Retrieved from https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd/4623
