Pharmacy closures

A paper from Guadamuz et al. (2024) examines trends in pharmacy closures between 2010-2021. The authors use data from the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (to describe US retail pharmacies), National Center for Health Statistics (to describe population characteristics at the county level) and the American Community Survey (to describe populations at the ZIP code level). They find that:

…of the 88,930 retail pharmacies operating during 2010–20, 29.4 percent had closed by 2021. The risk for closure for pharmacies in predominantly Black and Latinx neighborhoods was higher than in White neighborhoods. Independent pharmacies were at greater risk for closure than chain pharmacies across all neighborhood and market characteristics.

You can read the full study here.