As part of the Connect2Health Task Force’s ongoing efforts to move the needle on broadband and advanced health care technologies, to support the agency’s strategic policy objectives in the area of digital health, and to promote data-driven decision making, the Task Force develops reports and conducts cutting-edge research and analysis. The selected documents listed on this page are divided into the following categories: Reports and Studies, Articles/Publications, and Data Analyses.
Reports and Studies
C2H Task Force Report and Recommendations: On Bridging the Broadband Health Gap (2018)
This comprehensive and detailed report chronicles the Task Force’s initial work and learnings; presents its findings and observations on key themes and trends in the broadband health space; and summarizes key proposals and recommendations to the Commission that could serve to refine broadband health policies, help accelerate broadband deployment and adoption, help bridge the rural broadband health gap, and promote broadband-enabled health care innovation. The report, among other things: (1) provides groundbreaking analysis of the data at the intersection of broadband and health, including a statistical snapshot of broadband health connectivity in the U.S.; (2) demonstrates, through its research analytics work, that not only is broadband connectivity a “social determinant of health,” one of the key environmental factors that public health scholars believe determine the health of communities, but that connectivity can be deemed a “super” determinant of health; (3) establishes that health is a compelling use case for broadband deployment and adoption in rural and underserved areas and that connected health changes the business case calculus in those areas as well; (4) discusses the apparent strong relationship between increasing broadband adoption at the community level and improved population health outcomes, even after controlling for other factors like education and income; and (5) explores future innovative use cases as a means of helping the Commission and external stakeholders stay ahead of the broadband health innovation curve—from smart homes using artificial intelligence to automatically detect and treat childhood asthma attacks to mobile applications that essentially transform automobiles into ambulances, extending the reach of “first responders.”
Broadband and Opioids: A Novel Look at the Digital Divide in Health (2022)
Recognizing the potential of broadband to help stakeholders respond to the ongoing opioid crisis, particularly in rural areas, Congress directed the Federal Communications Commission to update its Mapping Broadband Health in America platform to include data on drug abuse. As a companion to that effort, the Connect2HealthFCC Task Force conducted a series of descriptive data analyses around the central premise that a data-driven approach can systematically reveal needs, gaps, and opportunities in the broadband health space and better target policy and other interventions.
Visualizing the Broadband and Opioids Space: Map Book (2022)
This map book complements the Broadband and Opioids: A Novel Look at the Digital Divide in Health report. It includes a curated set of 21 county-level maps visualizing the intersection of fixed terrestrial broadband connectivity and opioid-related health need.
The Task Force and the National Cancer Institute convened a cross-disciplinary group of senior thought leaders from both public and private sectors across the country to help chart the future of connected cancer care, especially in rural and underserved communities. This report summarizes their findings and recommendations.
Broadband Connectivity: A “’Super’ Determinant of Health” (2017)
This research study looked at the relationship between the level of connectivity in a community and that community’s health, and whether increasing broadband connectivity in a community correlates to improved health outcomes at the community and population levels. The Task Force found that there is ample evidence to conclude that broadband connectivity is not only a “social determinant of health,” one of the key environmental factors that determine the health of communities, but also a “super determinant of health” because of its role as a gateway to other social determinants of health such as education, employment opportunities, and job training.
Articles/Publications
Experiencing Cancer in Appalachian Kentucky – Preface
(Journal of Appalachian Health, July 2020)
Connected cancer care is of increasing importance in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Linking & Amplifying User-Centered Networks through Connected Health (L.A.U.N.C.H.) Collaborative in Appalachian Kentucky has pioneered a new roadmap for equipping communities with the transformative power of broadband to innovate around the future of cancer care and to better scale their ideas. The roadmap involves reaching across disciplines, including public health, anthropology, telecommunications, and user-centered design. The goal is to leverage connectivity and cancer communication research and practice to make a real difference for patients and families.
Experiencing Cancer in Appalachian Kentucky
(Journal of Appalachian Health, July 2020)
This article, co-authored by members of the Task Force, presents research by the L.A.U.N.C.H. collaborative that offers a new framework for health care that could be compared to a digital quilt, powered by community-based participatory design, with lived expertise and the newest advances in broadband-enabled connected health solutions. L.A.U.N.C.H. was a multi-year national project led jointly by the Task Force and the National Cancer Institute to demonstrate the power of broadband-enabled health technologies and solutions to transform the future of connected cancer care.
Barn-Raising on the Digital Frontier: The L.A.U.N.C.H. Collaborative
(Journal of Appalachian Health, January 2020)
This paper, published in the January 2020 issue of the Journal of Appalachian Health, highlights this research and the work of the L.A.U.N.C.H. Collaborative. A meta-analysis of oncology papers from around the world revealed that cancer patients who lived more than 50 miles away from hospital centers routinely presented with more advanced stages of disease at diagnosis, exhibited lower adherence to prescribed treatments, presented with poorer diagnoses, and reported a lower quality of life than patients who lived nearer to care facilities. Connected health approaches—or the use of broadband and telecommunications technologies to evaluate, diagnose, and monitor patients beyond the clinic—are becoming an indispensable tool in medicine to overcome the obstacle of distance.
Data Analyses
Mapping Broadband Health in America 2024: Public Notice
The Public Notice provides key findings and sample maps based on data from the December 2024 launch of the Mapping Broadband Health in America platform, demonstrating how the platform and underlying data can promote data-driven decisionmaking for policymakers and other stakeholders.
A Regional Analysis of Broadband Connectivity and Lung Cancer in the Appalachian Region (2023)
At the 2023 American Society of Preventive Oncology (ASPO) Annual Meeting in San Diego, the Task Force presented a research poster analyzing broadband connectivity and lung cancer in the Appalachian Region. The findings of our data analysis indicated that rural counties in the Appalachian Region and contiguous area bear the double burden of lower broadband connectivity and higher lung cancer rates and can be considered priorities for policymaking, cross-sector investment, support, and collaboration.
Mapping Broadband Health in America 2017: Key Findings
In 2016, the Task Force created and unveiled its Mapping Broadband Health in America platform, which allows users to visualize, overlay, and analyze broadband and health data at the national, state, and county levels. The linked document provides key findings based on data from the initial launch of the platform.
Broadband and Health Conceptual Frameworks
The Task Force develops conceptual frameworks to examine how to intersect broadband connectivity and health data on the Mapping Broadband Health in America platform. The platform includes maternal health, opioids, and chronic disease data. All the conceptual frameworks can be found in the linked document, and to read more about them, users can read our Focus on Maternal Health, Focus on Opioids, and Focus on Chronic Disease pages.
Broadband as a Social Determinant of Health Domain
Task Force research recognizes that broadband plays a more direct and consequential role, as a social determinant of health, if not as a “super” determinant of health. The Advancing Broadband Connectivity as a Social Determinant of Health Initiative pursues this promising research to inform Commission actions to help close the digital divide in health.