An Analysis of the Spatial Distribution of Health Care Development in the Counties of Yazd Province in 2016

Determining the development level of various communities paves the way for accurate planning. The present study provides an analysis of health care development in the counties of Yazd province using 22 health indicators.

The present study was conducted using an economic and retrospective approach. The data in this study were collected in 2016 using a documentary study. Besides, the analytic hierarchy process and the entropy method were used to weight the indicators, and the VIKOR method and Sturges' rule were used to analyze the data and to rate the counties with SPSS software (version 22).

Yazd province with an average Q value of 0.43 does not have a favorable position in terms of the development of health services. It was also shown that Taft and Saduq counties had the highest and lowest levels of health care development, respectively.

Given that Yazd province in general and its counties, in particular, were not in a favorable situation in terms of health care indicators, the components such as education, health care, treatment, and housing need to be considered the priority of human development programs in the 10 counties of Yazd province. Furthermore, regardless of variables such as population, administrative-military densities, and size, individual factors like gender, literacy, and awareness as well as economic factors such as income need to be taken into account in development programs.