Beyond Obstetricians Density: The Dominant Role of Road Quality in Maternal Mortality-an Ecological Study from Indonesia

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-762-0_10How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Maternal Mortality; Road Quality; Doctor Density; Obstetrician; Transportation

Abstract

Maternal mortality remains a significant public health issue in Indonesia, with wide disparities across provinces. While national strategies have focused on expanding health insurance coverage and increasing the number of skilled birth attendants, the role of infrastructure, particularly road conditions, has received less attention. This study aimed to examine the relationship between maternal mortality and three key factors: the number of obstetricians, road quality, and health insurance coverage. An ecological cross-sectional study was conducted using secondary data from 34 Indonesian provinces. Maternal mortality ratio (MMR) data were sourced from the 2020 Long Form Population Census, while data on obstetricians, road conditions, and BPJS health insurance coverage were obtained from national government reports (2021–2025). Pearson correlation and multiple linear regression analyses were performed. Results showed that road quality had the strongest and most statistically significant inverse relationship with MMR (β = –3.58, p = 0.005), while the number of obstetricians and insurance coverage were not significant predictors in the multivariate model. These findings highlight the importance of integrating transportation infrastructure development into maternal health policies, particularly in underserved regions, to accelerate progress toward achieving national and global maternal mortality reduction targets.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this chapter or parts of it.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Cyntia Puspa Pitaloka
AU  - Alland Adrian Josep
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/04
TI  - Beyond Obstetricians Density: The Dominant Role of Road Quality in Maternal Mortality-an Ecological Study from Indonesia
BT  - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Bioinformatics, Biotechnology, and Biomedical Engineering (BIOMIC 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 148
EP  - 160
SN  - 2468-5739
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-762-0_10
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-762-0_10
ID  - Pitaloka2026
ER  -