Characteristics of Medical Deserts and Approaches to Mitigate Their Health Workforce Issues: A Scoping Review of Empirical Studies in Western Countries.

Our study provides the first scoping review that presents and categorizes definitions, characteristics, contributing factors, and approaches to mitigate HWF issues in medical deserts. We identified gaps such as the scarcity of longitudinal studies to investigate the impact of factors contributing to medical deserts, and interventional studies to evaluate the effectiveness of approaches to mitigate HWF issues.