Sullivan County is perhaps the greenest desert you will ever see.
It is a picturesque and rural corner of Pennsylvania tucked midway between the Williamsport and the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metro areas in the state’s Endless Mountain region.
It’s also one of Pennsylvania’s growing “pharmacy deserts,” defined as places where the nearest drugstore is at least five miles away. That benchmark is on the low side here.
“We see people from 20, 30 miles away,” Dushore Pharmacy owner Melissa Keller said of her customers.
Sullivan County’s only pharmacy is on South German Street in the borough of Dushore, a block from the county’s only traffic light. Keller’s nearest competitor is 17 miles away, and her service area spills into neighboring counties.
“We deliver as far down as Hughesville,” Keller said, referencing a Lycoming County community that is a 40-minute drive in good weather. “They had a couple of independent pharmacies close down there, so we want to try to get into that area.”
It is a scenario with parallels statewide. Based on available 2022 data, an estimated 540,000 rural Pennsylvania residents, or 27%, lived at least five miles from the nearest pharmacy, said Kyle Kopko, executive director of the Center for Rural Pennsylvania. In urban counties, 151,000 people (2%) lived in such pharmacy deserts.
Sullivan is one of two counties in the state with only one pharmacy each — Cameron is the other — and Pennsylvania Pharmacists Association board president Chris Antypas wrote in a recent op-ed piece that 21 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties have fewer than 10 pharmacies.
