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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Health Economics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1555598
This article is part of the Research Topic Public Health Outcomes: The Role of Social Security Systems in Improving Residents' Health Welfare View all 25 articles
Trends and Disparity in the Provision and Consumption of Essential Medicines in China from 2016 to 2021: Institutional, Regional, and Economic Variations
Provisionally accepted- Department of Pharmacy Management and Clinical Pharmacy, School of Pharmacy, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China
Analyze the provision and consumption of essential medicines (EMs) across healthcare institutions, regions, and levels of economic development. Evaluate the mechanisms by which EMs policies promote their own implementation. Methods: Using national drug utilization monitoring database (2016-2021), we perform a descriptive analysis to explore trends and disparities in EM provision and consumption across three institution levels, four regions (from 30 provinces), and different economic development levels in China. Key metrics include the average number and proportion of provided EMs and the consumption rate per healthcare institution. Utilize a two-way fixed-effects regression model to evaluate the relationship between EMs provision and consumption. Findings：The average provided number of EMs is much lower than that in the national EMs list. Both provision (number and proportion) and consumption of EMs show institutional and regional disparities. There is a moderately positive correlation between EMs provided proportion and GDP (0.66, P<0.01), while the provided proportion and consumption rate are moderately negatively correlated with GDP (-0.66, P<0.01; -0.64, P<0.01). In highly developed regions, EMs supply is highest but utilization lowest; in underdeveloped regions, provision is least but utilization relatively high.This study shows disparities in EM provision and consumption across institutions, regions, and economic levels in China. Although essential medicine policy coordination with other policies needs improvement, targeted interventions are needed to bridge gaps in less developed regions and promote medicine equity.
Keywords: Essential medicines availability, global health, Equitable healthcare access, China's healthcare system, EMs availability and consumption, Regional disparities
Received: 15 Jan 2025; Accepted: 07 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhao, Lin, Ding, Han, Zhao and Fang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yu Fang, Department of Pharmacy Management and Clinical Pharmacy, School of Pharmacy, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China
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