A Multi-Objective Model for Environmentally Sustainable Healthcare Facility Location-Allocation: Child Cancer Hospitals Establishment in Iran in 2030

Document Type : Article

Authors

Department of Industrial Engineering, Babol Noshirvani University of Technology, Babol, Iran

Abstract

An unbalanced healthcare facility system causes patients to travel between areas to reach qualified treatment resources, resulting in patient fatigue, unnecessary expenses, delays in disease diagnosis and treatment, and environmental destruction due to CO2 emissions. The environmentally sustainable healthcare facility location-allocation problem focusing on minimizing the carbon footprint resulting from patients’ movement has not been considered. Cancer hospitals provide cancer patients with comprehensive treatment services helpful for avoiding cancer patients referring to different healthcare centers. Child cancer hospitals with a child-centered design can facilitate the cancer disease curing period for children. Although cancer hospital network design has been noticed in recent years, the child cancer hospital location- allocation problem has received no attention. This paper contributes to the environmentally sustainable healthcare facility location-allocation problem by introducing a multi-objective, mixed-integer linear mathematical model to minimize hospital establishment costs, surplus established beds, and the carbon footprint effect for child cancer hospitals' network design. The newly developed model is solved in a case study to propose a child cancer network establishment for Iran in 2030 using the CPLEX solver due to the significant shortage of specialized cancer treatment capacities in cancer hospitals, particularly those for children. The results indicated the necessity of establishing new child cancer hospitals in 9 provinces, with the highest number of new beds required in Isfahan province and existing beds in Tehran province. The validation of the carbon footprint effect demonstrates that reducing the carbon footprint could lead to a 50% decrease in CO2 emissions. Additionally, the sensitivity analysis reveals that overlooking certain cost and efficiency factors could significantly reduce the carbon footprint effect, highlighting the potential for improved healthcare equity in cancer treatment by reducing the need for child cancer patients and their families to travel between provinces. In addition, several managerial insights and recommendations for future research are proposed.

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References

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Sharif Journal of Industrial Engineering & Management
Volume 41, Issue 2 - Serial Number 2
February 2026
Pages 19-29

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