A new CDC analysis is challenging assumptions about where pharmacy access in the U.S. is worst — and the answer isn’t rural America.
Researchers from the Minnesota Department of Health and University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy mapped pharmacy access against the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index across 1,498 census tracts, using Minnesota pharmacy licensing data from five points between 2009 and 2024, according to the study published July 9.
Here are five things to know:
- The Minneapolis-St. Paul urban core has the largest share of its population living with low or limited pharmacy access, at 63.2%. Nonmetro areas followed at 19.2%.
- Minnesota lost 13% of its community pharmacies between 2009 and 2024, a decline researchers linked to worsening access to preventive care, vaccinations and chronic disease management.
- Nearly 1.1 million Minnesotans, almost 20% of the state’s population, live in a census tract with low or limited pharmacy access.
- Statewide and in nonmetro areas, low- and limited-access tracts had significantly higher social vulnerability scores than high-access tracts. But in metro areas outside the urban core, the pattern reversed: Low-access tracts had lower vulnerability scores, a trend researchers tied to affluent neighborhoods where residents have resources to travel farther.
- Recent closures are concentrating in vulnerable communities. Twenty-four tracts covering 77,000 residents became low-access between 2009 and 2024, and those tracts had markedly higher vulnerability scores than tracts that were already low-access in 2009.
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