Geospatial Disparities in Access to Proton Therapy in the Continental United States

Abstract

Proton therapy (PT) is an important component of therapy for select cancers, but no formal study of geospatial access to PT has been conducted to date. Population data for 320.7 million people in 32,644 zip codes were analyzed. Median travel time was 1.61 (IQR 0.67–3.36) hours for children and 1.64 (IQR 0.69–3.33) hours for adults. Significant variation in travel time to nearest PT center was observed between states. The West has a longer median travel time of 3.51 (IQR 1.15–7.13) hours when compared to the Midwest (1.70, IQR 0.79–2.69), South (1.60, IQR 0.61–3.12) and Northeast (1.04, IQR 0.57–2.01).

Keywords:

• Radiation oncology
• access to care
• geospatial access
• healthcare disparities

Declaration of interest

Dr. Simone reports other from Varian Medical Systems, outside the scope of the submitted work. The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Data availability statement

All data used in this project are publicly available variables from the US Census Bureau.