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Care access · Health need meeting barriers to care
Some Maryland ZIP codes carry two things at once: an elevated documented burden of health need, and real barriers to reaching care. This page is scoped to Maryland.
MarylandData release 2026Documented inputs
Across parts of Maryland, the same ZIP codes show elevated health need and limited access to care together. Here is what each of those two axes measures — and how we read the overlap without ever claiming one causes the other.
How we measure this →The need axis reads six measures of health need for each ZIP code: how many people lack insurance, live in poverty, or face food or housing insecurity, alongside the share reporting fair-or-poor health and the local burden of chronic conditions. A ZIP reads high-need when several of these are elevated at once.
The access axis reads six barriers to reaching care: distance to the nearest emergency room and to the nearest community health center, how thin the local supply of physicians and pharmacies is, how many households have no vehicle, and how limited home internet is for telehealth. A ZIP reads low-access when several of these barriers stack up.
What this is — and isn't. These are two things established for the same place: an elevated burden of health need, and barriers to reaching care. This page does not claim one causes the other, does not say anyone is underserved because of their health, does not combine the two into a single risk number, and does not rank areas by how "bad" the overlap is. It reports where both are elevated together, measured against ZIP codes across the country, and nothing more.
The ZIP codes (ZCTAs) in Maryland where documented health need and barriers to reaching care are both elevated. Each one sits in the most-affected 10% of US ZIP codes on several measures of each — the comparison is national, and this list is Maryland only. Each is tagged by how pronounced the overlap is — see the two labels below.
Documented health need here overlaps with barriers to reaching care, sitting in the most-affected 10% of US ZIP codes on several measures of each.
Documented health need here overlaps with barriers to reaching care, sitting in the most-affected 10% of US ZIP codes on several measures of each.
Read from public data, area by area — not a statement about any individual. A ZIP appears here only when enough of the underlying measures are observable to compute both axes; where too many are missing, its overlap is shown as not computed — limited data, never as "no deficit." A ZIP that is measured and simply does not carry the overlap is not listed either — absence from this list is never a claim that a place is fine. The comparison is national — a ZIP appears when it sits in the most-affected 10% of US ZIP codes on several measures of each axis — and this list is Maryland only. Read the full methodology →
Each ZIP links to its full ZipVitals page. Maryland only — the national list is on the explainer page.