Telehealth

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).

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:

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.