USC’s Dima M. Qato spent more than a decade working as a community pharmacist and public health advocate in underserved refugee and immigrant communities in Chicago. Through her experiences and public health training, Qato — the daughter of a pharmacist and now an associate professor at the USC School of Pharmacy — has come to view pharmacy access as a human rights issue. Pharmacies are a frequently overlooked piece of the health care access puzzle. “Dr. Qato has spent several years thinking about various barriers to pharmacy access and how these impact equity in health care — her work has defined and measured the idea of pharmacy deserts in urban areas around the U.S.,” said Robert Vos, an associate professor (teaching) of spatial sciences, who helped build the tool. “We combined her insights about pharmacy access with spatial thinking and computing. By collaborating, we have been able to attack the problem on a national scale using faster spatial computation and spatial analysis to better understand geographic contexts, like urban versus rural areas.”