Health and Media

On Monday, November 11th, to commemorate Veterans Day, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society released Veterans and Digital Equity: Planning for Success, a collaborative research effort with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Offices of Connected Care and Rural Engagement. We reviewed state digital equity plans to better understand what states' strategies are for connecting Veterans. My coauthors, Dr.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau establishes a uniform completion deadline of Dec. 31, 2025, for all participants in the Connected Care Pilot Program, and waives the previous completion deadline of three years from each project's start date.

The Data Mapping to Save Moms’ Lives Act directed the Federal Communications Commission to incorporate maternal health data into its Mapping Broadband Health in America platform. The agency took this task seriously and on June 20, 2023, first introduced this information on the platform, including public data about maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity, as well as facts about race and ethnicity, maternal age, rurality, areas with maternity care deserts, and areas with shortages of mental health care providers.

The United States has the highest level of maternal mortality of any industrialized country.  And deaths from pregnancy-related causes strike women of color and those who live in rural communities especially hard.  This is a crisis.  It requires everyone to identify how they can help because so many studies show that most pregnancy-related deaths are preventable.... We used authority under the Data Mapping to Save Moms’ Lives Act to update the agency’s Mapping Broadband Health in America platform to include maternal health data.

States are using their digital equity plans to demonstrate how successful digital inclusion efforts can advance progress toward other goals, including improvements to civic and social engagement, economic development, education, health care, and delivery of essential services.

The Federal Communications Commission approved rules that will require all U.S. wireless carriers to implement georouting for calls to the 988 Lifeline. These rules will facilitate access to the 988 Lifeline’s critical local intervention services by requiring wireless providers to implement georouting solutions for 988 calls to route wireless calls to local crisis centers based on the geographic area associated with the origin of a 988 call rather than by area code and exchange, while protecting the privacy needs of the caller.

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, and Congressman Tony Cárdenas (D-CA) visited Sycamores Pacoima Community Based Services  to learn about the Centers’ collaboration with the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and highlighted how georouting can improve the ability for people in crisis to receive the local care they need.

Heartland Forward is launching an initiative to expand telehealth access in Arkansas and Oklahoma by teaching librarians how to prepare community members for a telehealth visit.

The Department of Veterans Affairs announced that veterans across the country who are enrolled in VA care can now receive virtual emergency assessments to determine the severity of medical afflictions. The new tele-emergency care—or tele-EC—service is designed to connect retired servicemembers with clinical triage nurses, who can then evaluate their symptoms and determine if they require in-person aid. Veterans can access the tele-EC service by contacting VA Health Connect—which provides veterans 24/7 access to

The Indian telecommunication market witnessed a distortion in 2016 due to a late-entrant firm's disruptive market entry with deep-discounted pricing; however, Internet penetration marked a considerable increase. Using nationally representative cross-sectional data from the post-market disruption period and an instrumental variable strategy for identification, we estimate the impact of the Internet on the uptake of maternal and child healthcare services. We find that the Internet improves the uptake of antenatal care, institutional delivery, postnatal care, and modern contraceptive use.