The Weapon was Ready But the Target May Have Moved or A Resource Allocation Index: A California Case Study

An index of relative need for health resources was developed to assist the California Rural Indian Health Board in allocating limited funds to rural California Indian health projects. The index was constructed by determining the relative weight of each project according to the following criteria: the current population served, the total population in the service area, the population density of the service area, the proportion of the population that lives within 30 minutes of the health facility, the distance of the health facility from the nearest urban area, and weather. A multi-step process was then used to determine weights to assign to each of the individual criteria.