Health and Media

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) is providing the funding through the Distance Learning and Telemedicine (DLT) grant program. These investments will benefit 5.4 million rural residents. Projects include:

Almost half of US counties face a “double burden” of chronic disease and a need for greater broadband connectivity, according to a new report filed with the Federal Communications Commission. The report comes from an advisory committee that was set up to identify barriers to telehealth and recommend solutions. The majority of “double burden” areas fall into what the report calls “clusters” of five or more counties with total populations exceeding 100,000.

The Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to reconsider certain portions of its “Promoting Telehealth in Rural America” Report and Order (R&O).

Google is teaming with one of the country’s largest health-care systems on a secret project to collect and crunch the detailed personal health information of millions of Americans across 21 states. The initiative, code-named “Project Nightingale,” appears to be the largest in a series of efforts by Silicon Valley giants to gain access to personal health data and establish a toehold in the massive health-care industry. Google launched the effort in 2018 with Ascension, the country’s second-largest health system.

The Federal Communications Commission released four reports from its Intergovernmental Advisory Committee (IAC). The reports aim to assist state, local, Tribal, and territorial officials and other stakeholders by offering recommendations and best practices to improve emergency alerting, bolster communications reliability during disasters, and promote the use of telemedicine:

On July 20, 2019, 13 senators wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai urging him to postpone adoption of a reform order of the Rural Health Care Program that was on the agenda for the FCC's Aug 1, 2019 meeting.

There’s a health-care crisis in the country and it’s hitting rural areas particularly hard. The US could face a shortage of 95,000 physicians by 2025, according to a recent report from the Association of American Medical Colleges. But health care’s physician distribution problem, with too many doctors in urban areas and not enough in rural locations, could be alleviated by community broadband.

Bridging the digital divide can help address our nation’s persistent health disparities. Rural Americans not only face limited access to health-care facilities, but “suffer from higher rates of obesity, mental health issues, diabetes, cancer, and opioid addiction.” But the tie that also binds is the lack of high-speed broadband connectivity in low-income communities, too. Rural America, as you know, is facing a physician shortage and low-income and rural populations are less likely to have choice when it comes to broadband providers.

Cities and towns throughout Northern California are issuing ordinances that would exclude new 5G cell sites from residential areas, citing supposed health concerns. Whatever the basis for residents’ objections to new cell towers, countless mayors, governors, and council members across the country—have little or no power under current rules to act on their constituents’ wishes. Nor do they have the leeway they once did to set pricing for cell sites, a lucrative source of funding for civic initiatives.