Financial disclosure: None.

Funding: None.

Acknowledgement: Tang and Gabriel had full access to all the data in the study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Conflicts of interest: None

KEY POINTS

What was already known?

•Pharmacist accessibility is key for the emerging role of community pharmacists beyond traditional dispensing roles.

•Pharmacy organizations claim that over 90% of Americans live within 5 miles of a community pharmacy, but the methods used to generate this statistic remain unclear.

•No peer-reviewed study has previously measured distance to community pharmacy across the US.

What this study adds.

•Using GIS analysis and a 1% random sample of a US synthetic population, we demonstrate that nearly 90% of Americans live within 5 miles of a community pharmacy. However, large variation in access to community pharmacies exists across the US.

Community pharmacies are highly accessible healthcare locations for the majority of the U.S. population.

Author Roles

Lucas A. Berenbrok, PharmD, MS (1,2,6,7,9,10,12,13,14)

Shangbin Tang, BS (1,2,3,4,5,6,8,10,11)

Nico Gabriel, MA (1,2,3,5,6,8,10,11)

Jingchuan Guo MD PhD (2,6,10)

Nasser Sharareh, PhD (2,6,10)

Nimish Patel, PharmD, PhD (2,6,10)

Sean Dickson JD, MPh (1,6,10)

Inmaculada Hernandez, PharmD, PhD (1,2,3,5,6,7,10,12,13,14)