Walking distances from services and destinations for residential aged-care centres in Australian cities

Aged-care centres are one of the common places used by the older Australian population as their residence. While these centres provide many health supports and assistance for the well-being of the residents, there are still many health benefits for this population by walking in the environment outside the centre, because of the positive effect of walking on health and the opportunities it provides for social interaction. However, to choose walking is dependent on several factors, some of which pertain to the availability of and accessibility to the facilities around the care centres. This paper has approached accessibility as a matter of walking distance to the facilities or services, or to the public transport with potential access to them. For this purpose, the paper has analysed the walking distances from residential aged-care centres to services and transport in the six largest Australian cities which host over 50% of the residential capacity of the aged-care centres within the country. The services included cafes, pharmacies, grocery stores, news agents, lottery outlets, and post offices. The study has used the 2017 database of aged-care centres from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, and Google Map API services to locate the services and transport stops around the centres and calculate the walking distances to them. The results indicated that in all cities, most of services were only in a walking distance for healthier residents, while the less mobile residents might have difficulty walking to the services, especially the pharmacies. Nevertheless, majority of centres were within a walking distance to points of public transport. In addition, the study found that the centres' distance to services varied considerably both inside a city and between cities, which implied there might have been no prior planning in the selection of the locations for building or repurposing the centres.