Telehealth

For pregnant women in rural areas, local resources supporting maternal health may be strained, and the nearest hospital is often far away, putting mothers and their babies at serious risk. That’s why I was proud to join my colleagues, Sens Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Todd Young (R-IN), and Brian Schatz (D-HI) to introduce the bipartisan Data Mapping to Save Moms’ Lives Act. This legislation would require the Federal Communications Commission to use data mapping to identify areas in the US that have both internet access gaps as well as high rates of poor maternal outcomes.

The Internet has become an indispensable platform for innovation, job creation, and free expression. It is critical to our quality of life and our global competitiveness. To take advantage of the major innovations that will be introduced in the coming years, Americans will need to be connected. And that, of course, only serves to underscore why the Federal Communications Commission’s top priority must be to expand the deployment of high-speed broadband networks to all American. I’m pleased to report that our strategy of encouraging investment and innovation is working.

What happens when a prime time TV show becomes a potential healthcare policy direction, plus a side helping of broadband adoption strategy? An episode of the NBC TV medical melodrama New Amsterdam inspired a five-city telehealth pilot project involving barbershops and hair salons. The show’s medical director had a brilliant idea to enlist barbershops in African-American neighborhoods to screen customers for hypertension (high blood pressure), which leads to an overwhelming majority of the 140,000 stroke-related deaths a year.

In the urban rental sector, where landlords around the country are trying to accommodate their residents’ needs with bike repair facilities and produce banks, one Philadelphia (PA) property developer is testing out telehealth.“The concept of landlords providing wraparound services for tenants, in particular, low-income tenants, is a no-brainer,” said Brian Murray, CEO of Shift Capital.

In urban neighborhoods, where Internet service and health care can be hard to access, a novel pilot project uses local barbershops and salons as wireless hubs and hypertension screening centers.

For anyone who is pregnant, having a hospital delivery room nearby means knowing that when the baby arrives medical assistance will be close at hand. But for too many of those in rural America, this comfort is often no longer available—and it is putting both women and babies at risk. In fact, the United States is the only industrialized nation with an increasing rate of maternal mortality and this problem hits women of color especially hard. The Federal Communications Commission has a long history of working to promote access to telehealth in rural communities.

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).