ArticleBMC health services research2012
Exploring the relationship between population density and maternal health coverage.
Article in BMC health services research, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Does population density impact maternal and child health? Mediating effects of the Universal Health Coverage Service Coverage Index.BMC public health · 2025Article
- A machine learning interpretation of the correlation between poverty and air pollution in the contiguous United States.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Joint spatiotemporal evaluation of multiple healthcare resources: hospitals, hospital beds and physicians across 365 Chinese cities over 22 years.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Healthcare Access and County-Level COVID-19 Mortality: Exploring the Impact of Hospital Proximity and Uninsurance Rates.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Economic and healthcare influences on circulatory diseases in Kazakhstan: a retrospective ecological study.Journal of health, population, and nutrition · 2024Article
- Do women living in a deprived neighborhood have higher maternity care costs and worse pregnancy outcomes? A retrospective population-based study.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- Neighborhood Disadvantage, Greenness, and Population Density as Predictors of Breastfeeding Practices: A Population Cohort Study from Finland.The Journal of nutrition · 2022Observational
- Assessing Trade-Offs and Optimal Ranges of Density for Life Expectancy and 12 Causes of Mortality in Metro Vancouver, Canada, 1990-2016.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Antenatal Care Research in East Africa During the Millennium Development Goals Initiative: A Scoping Review.Maternal and child health journal · 2022Article
- Geographic variations in dental sealant utilization by Medicaid enrollees.Journal of public health dentistry · 2021Article
- Geospatial analysis of determinants of neonatal mortality in Ghana.BMC public health · 2021Article
- The Effect of Urbanization on Population Health: Evidence From China.Frontiers in public health · 2021Article
- Health Policy Performance in 16 Caribbean States, 2010-2015.American journal of public health · 2019Article
- Availability and inequality in accessibility of health centre-based primary healthcare in Ethiopia.PloS one · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundDelivering health services to dense populations is more practical than to dispersed populations, other factors constant. This engenders the hypothesis that population density positively affects coverage rates of health services. This hypothesis has been tested indirectly for some services at a local level, but not at a national level.
methodsWe use cross-sectional data to conduct cross-country, OLS regressions at the national level to estimate the relationship between population density and maternal health coverage. We separately estimate the effect of two measures of density on three population-level coverage rates (6 tests in total). Our coverage indicators are the fraction of the maternal population completing four antenatal care visits and the utilization rates of both skilled birth attendants and in-facility delivery. The first density metric we use is the percentage of a population living in an urban area. The second metric, which we denote as a density score, is a relative ranking of countries by population density. The score's calculation discounts a nation's uninhabited territory under the assumption those areas are irrelevant to service delivery.
resultsWe find significantly positive relationships between our maternal health indicators and density measures. On average, a one-unit increase in our density score is equivalent to a 0.2% increase in coverage rates.
conclusionsCountries with dispersed populations face higher burdens to achieve multinational coverage targets such as the United Nations' Millennial Development Goals.
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