Oral Cancer, Socioeconomic Status, and Access to Health Care in BC
Treatment Centre
Cost-Access Analysis
Once the clusters of oral cancer were identified, our team analyzed the distance and time between the clusters to treatment centres. Only the six treatment centres providing radiation therapy were considered in this project. It is very difficult to record surgery or chemotherapy treatments because these operations can be done at numerous hospitals and clinics. The limited number of facilities that provide radiation therapy makes it much easier to track an individual patient`s treatment.
The clusters within Metro Vancouver were once again separated from those outside the region. The clusters were converted from raster images to vector polygons. The centroid of each cluster-polygon was then found for each cluster.
The cluster-polygons outside Metro Vancouver
The cluster-polygons were converted to points
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The cluster-polygons within Metro Vancouver
The cluster-polygons were converted to points
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A Closest Facility network analysis was conducted using a network created from the CanMap Route Logistics (2012) data acquired from the online data service, Abacus. The Route Logistics dataset possesses travel-time within its road network which is a more accurate approximation of cost-access than just distance alone.
The cluster-points (yellow) generated from cluster-polygons (red) were physically re-adjusted to sit on nearest road feature (black).
