TY - JOUR
T1 - Community Healthcare Network in Underserved Areas
T2 - Design, Mathematical Models, and Analysis
AU - Cherkesly, Marilène
AU - Rancourt, Marie Ève
AU - Smilowitz, Karen R.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada under the scholarship PDF-471388-2015 and under grants 2014-03945 and 2015-06189. This support is gratefully acknowledged. We thank the reviewers for their valuable comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Production and Operations Management Society
PY - 2019/7
Y1 - 2019/7
N2 - In community health programs implemented in underserved areas, community healthcare workers (CHWs) prevent, diagnose, and treat the most common diseases. To ensure continuous in-service training of CHWs, some countries have mentored highly skilled CHWs to become supervisors. Designing a network in such a context implies determining the number of CHWs and supervisors, as well as the routing of the supervisors. This can be defined as a location-routing covering problem (LRCP), a variant of the location-routing and the covering tour problems. To solve the LRCP, we propose set-partitioning formulations and a procedure to generate only non-dominated variables without losing optimality, which also allows to break the symmetry between variables. Finding the most appropriate mathematical model is important to solve real-life instances, improve the quality of the solution, and reduce the total computation time. Therefore, we develop tools to assist with the design and analysis of a community healthcare network in order to increase health coverage for underserved areas. Results are presented for an application in Liberia, including sensitivity analyses on various parameters and managerial insights.
AB - In community health programs implemented in underserved areas, community healthcare workers (CHWs) prevent, diagnose, and treat the most common diseases. To ensure continuous in-service training of CHWs, some countries have mentored highly skilled CHWs to become supervisors. Designing a network in such a context implies determining the number of CHWs and supervisors, as well as the routing of the supervisors. This can be defined as a location-routing covering problem (LRCP), a variant of the location-routing and the covering tour problems. To solve the LRCP, we propose set-partitioning formulations and a procedure to generate only non-dominated variables without losing optimality, which also allows to break the symmetry between variables. Finding the most appropriate mathematical model is important to solve real-life instances, improve the quality of the solution, and reduce the total computation time. Therefore, we develop tools to assist with the design and analysis of a community healthcare network in order to increase health coverage for underserved areas. Results are presented for an application in Liberia, including sensitivity analyses on various parameters and managerial insights.
KW - community healthcare network design
KW - humanitarian logistics
KW - location-routing problems
KW - mathematical models
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U2 - 10.1111/poms.13008
DO - 10.1111/poms.13008
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85062936833
SN - 1059-1478
VL - 28
SP - 1716
EP - 1734
JO - Production and Operations Management
JF - Production and Operations Management
IS - 7
ER -
