PREFACE
Goal and organization of this report The goal of this report is to present the new health planning tool developed by Children’s Health Fund (CHF): the Health Transportation Shortage Index (HTSI ). The report will discuss the rationale for developing this instrument, detail the data that support it, and describe its use to target communities that may need improved transportation resources to facilitate child health care access. SM
The report consists of an Abstract and Overview, which present the HTSI and the rationale for its development. The technical basis for the development of the HTSI is then presented in the following five sections. Section One is a review of the literature on transportation and health care access, including a discussion of prior efforts to quantify the extent of the problem. Section Two presents original data that describe the extent to which inadequate transportation compromises child health care access and the key factors associated with transportation shortages. Section Three discusses in detail the data that support the HTSI . While the Index is a simple tool that may be easily used by health planners, the factors that it incorporates were developed through extensive research and statistical modeling. Technical details are presented in footnotes and text boxes. Section Four briefly discusses potential solutions to improve transportation availability to support child health care access. A more extensive discussion of these transportation programs and strategies is beyond the scope of this report. Section Five is a brief conclusion. SM
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A brief CHF Special Report summarizing this work is available from the Children’s Health Fund website at: http://www.childrenshealthfund.org/sites/default/files/Health-TransportationShortage-Index-HTSI.pdf. Copies can be requested by email: rgrant@chfund.org.
Childr en' s He a lt h Fund
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