A model for locating preventive health care facilities

In this paper, we focus on the problem of locating preventive health care (PHC) facilities. The most important factors that promote participation rates in PHC programs include the establishment of an appropriate infrastructure and the provision of a satisfactory quality of care. For this purpose, we develop a strategic level multi-objective mixed integer linear programming model for locating PHC facilities to ensure maximum participation and provide timely service to potential clients. We, then, apply the model to a case study of locating Cancer Early Diagnosis, Screening and Training Centers in Istanbul, Turkey and solve it considering the forecasted population of each district in Istanbul for the next 15 years. We also perform a sensitivity analysis to quantify the effect of different weighting strategies on the value of each term in the objective function.