Abstract:
Background: Poor physical access to health facilities has been iden-
tified as an important contributor to reduced uptake of preventive
health services and is likely to be most critical in low-income set-
tings. However, the relation among physical access, travel behavior,
and the uptake of healthcare is difficult to quantify.
Methods: Using anonymized mobile phone data from 2008 to 2009,
we analyze individual and spatially aggregated travel patterns of
14,816,521 subscribers across Kenya and compare these measures
to (1) estimated travel times to health facilities and (2) data on the
uptake of 2 preventive healthcare interventions in an area of western
Kenya: childhood immunizations and antenatal care.
Results: We document that long travel times to health facilities are
strongly correlated with increased mobility in geographically iso-
lated areas. Furthermore, we found that in areas with equal physi-
cal access to healthcare, mobile phone-derived measures of mobility
predict which regions are lacking preventive care.
Conclusions: routinely collected mobile phone data provide a
simple and low-cost approach to mapping the uptake of preventive
healthcare in low-income settings
