Expanding Internet Access Improves Health Outcomes

“Social determinants of health” is a hot topic among government and health system executives. The phrase usually refers to basic food, housing and transportation disparities that can lead adjoining ZIP codes to have drastically different life expectancies. But could lack of broadband Internet access also be considered a social determinant of health? Many rural health advocates say yes, and they are trying to do something about it by pushing for the infrastructure to enable telehealth programs and remote patient monitoring. Researchers have a name for areas that have both low rates of home broadband and higher-than-national-average mortality rates for cancer and other diseases: “double-burdened counties.”