Abdominal aortic aneurysms are the third leading cause of sudden death in men 60 years and over. AAAneurysm Outreach provides free screenings to residents of Louisiana and beyond. Service areas were calculated for each AAAneurysm Outreach screening event location and stroke center. Data provided by the 2010 U.S. Census, the American Community Survey, and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System were used to describe demographics of the underserved populations and to identify high-risk areas for targeted interventions. Twenty-five percent of age-eligible Louisianans reside outside optimal drive-time-to-screening-event zones but within spatially clustered areas of increased prevalence rates. The maximum drive-time-to-treatment zones excluded 1,395 residents 65 years and over from timely access to emergency medical care. Results revealed limitations in the geographic breadth of the screening program and small disparities in accessibility to emergency healthcare.

Cycling to school is one way of minimising the negative environmental effects of car use, on the one hand, and increasing children’s exercise on the other. Cycling can also be challenging in winter as bicycle paths need keep a certain standard to be cyclable (e.g. cleared of snow). An assumption is made that cycling in winter can affect the accessibility as less maintained roads will not be as cyclable. This study looks at the case of Umeå, in northern Sweden that has a long winter season and have prioritized bicycle paths in terms of maintenance. Through service area analysis in ArcGIS software, accessibility in terms of travel time is measured to the closest primary and lower secondary school in 10-minute intervals and in two seasonal scenarios. By applying soft restrictions and speed differences, the priority in the bicycle network is considered in the winter scenario. The number of children between 7 – 15 years who live within each service area is also calculated. The results show that 98 % of children in the study area can cycle to their closest school regardless of education level or season. Slight seasonal differences were found but are not significant. This is positive in terms of children’s general accessibility to school by bicycle but also in the potential possibilities for children to cycle to school all year round. The challenge now lies primarily in the individual components of accessibility and whether children are authorised to cycle by their parents/guardians.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Food access is a dimension of food security that many struggle with even in high- income countries, which is a contributing factor to chronic diet-related disease. Inequalities in economic access to food has been addressed in public policy for several decades, but spatial access to food has only been seriously studied and addressed by policy for the past twenty-five years. After the food desert metaphor emerged, it was promptly accepted as a standard measure of food access for governments and a basis for policies created to address inequalities. Conceptual criticisms and methodological limitations of the metaphor have led the study of spatial access to food towards newer methods that measure food access more realistically and assist in the development and assessment of intervention strategies to inform policy decisions. This thesis describes the history of the food desert metaphor from its emergence until its adoption in US public policy, the conceptual criticisms and methodological limitations that surround it, and offers an analysis that measures the impact of change in the availability of public transportation on spatial access to food for various population subgroups that are more at risk of food insecurity in Marion County, Indiana. Results demonstrate that policies and plans designed without consideration for food access have an impact on it nevertheless, and that policymakers and planners can leverage such strategies to better coordinate efforts across government to reduce inequalities in spatial access to food and food insecurity overall.