Rural Healthcare Accessibility in Alberta:

Travel Time, Trauma Outcomes, Housing, Socioeconomic Disparities,

and a Preliminary Geospatial Accessibility Analysis

 

Suvisha Palla

Master’s in information technology (Project Management)

 

Integrated Travel Research and Development

Arizona State University

 

May 2026

 

 

Abstract

 

This paper synthesizes six weeks of systematic preliminary research into rural healthcare accessibility in Alberta, Canada, together with a preliminary geospatial accessibility analysis conducted using publicly available facility and census data. The study examines the intersecting dimensions of trauma systems and emergency care infrastructure, geographic and socioeconomic determinants of healthcare access, housing conditions as indicators of service accessibility, and a range of systemic operational factors including ambulance coverage, population ageing, road network quality, rural service deficits, and seasonal weather. A nearest-neighbour spatial analysis was performed across Alberta census subdivisions using coordinates from 114 mapped hospital locations to generate straight-line distance estimates to the nearest hospital for each community. Results show that while the majority of Alberta census subdivisions fall within 30 km of a hospital, a meaningful subset of communities — particularly in the North Zone and remote northern regions — face distances exceeding 100 km, with some Indigenous and remote communities estimated at over 200 km from the nearest facility. These findings confirm and quantify the geographic disparities identified in the literature review phase, and establish the empirical foundation for a subsequent GIS network-routing and travel-time modelling phase. Key themes include the disproportionate burden of healthcare inaccessibility faced by rural and Indigenous communities, the relationship between extended travel time and trauma mortality, the role of socioeconomic indicators in shaping healthcare outcomes, and the compounding effect of systemic barriers including EMS response capacity, ageing demographics, road infrastructure quality, and seasonal weather disruptions.

 

Keywords: rural healthcare access, Alberta, travel time, trauma mortality, GIS, geospatial analysis, Indigenous health disparities, housing affordability, spatial analysis, ambulance response, population ageing, nearest-neighbour distance, census subdivision

 

LINK to the Research Paper