Researchers have come up with a tool that employers, benefits advisors and others can use to analyze how easily health plan participants can get to brick-and-mortar pharmacies: a method for identifying "pharmacy deserts" and communities at risk of becoming pharmacy deserts.

The researchers used pharmacy location data from the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs to determine how long it would take 80% of the people in a census tract, or neighborhood, to drive to a pharmacy, then compared that with how long it would take the same people to drive to supermarkets. They defined a census as a pharmacy desert if the travel time to the nearest retail pharmacy was greater than the travel time to a supermarket. They defined a census tract as vulnerable to becoming a desert if people in the tract had just one retail pharmacy that was closer than the nearest supermarket.