More than one in five adults with limited public transit access forgo health care because of transportation barriers Smith, Laura Barrie, author. Karpman, Michael, author. Gonzalez, Dulce, author. Morriss, Sarah (Of Urban Institute), author. Ethnic and Racial Minorities -- statistics & numerical data Health Equity -- economics Health Services Accessibility -- economics Health Services Accessibility -- statistics & numerical data Health Policy Social Determinants of Health -- statistics & numerical data Transportation of Patients -- economics Transportation Facilities -- statistics & numerical data Access to health care requires that affordable care is not only available but also reachable. Many patients—disproportionately those with low incomes—face transportation barriers, leaving them to forgo or skip health care visits, which can in turn be detrimental to long-term health. Private motorized vehicles are the primary form of transportation in the US, but many people— especially those who live in urban areas, have low incomes, or are Black and Hispanic/Latinx—rely on public transit. Research shows that public transportation expansions improve access to health care, especially for people covered by Medicaid. While substantial increases in the availability of telehealth since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic likely reduced transportation barriers for some types of health care, especially mental health and primary care services, telehealth is not accessible to all adults and cannot substitute for in-person care for all health care needs. More work is needed to understand national patterns in the role of transportation and public transit in access to medical care and, ultimately, the importance of transportation for health equity. Using June 2022 data from the Urban Institute’s Health Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS), we examine transportation barriers to health care and the association between public transit accessibility and access to care. We estimate the share of adults who had unmet health care needs or who missed or skipped health care visits in the past 12 months because of difficulties finding transportation, and how these experiences vary by race and ethnicity, family income, disability status, and other characteristics. Washington, DC : Urban Institute, April 2023 Health Policy Center (Urban Institute), issuing body. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, issuing body. Technical Report Text Illustrations 1 online resource (1 PDF file (16 pages)) nlm:nlmuid-9918627776806676-pdf 9918627776806676 http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918627776806676 English United States Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-DC license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0