About

“You cannot change what you do not measure.” Author unknown

Introducing the Broadband-Health-Connectivity Snapshot (Phase 1) maps – created by the Connect2HealthFCC Task Force. The ultimate goal of the snapshots is to provide a high-level overview of the current state of affairs at the intersection of broadband, connectivity, and health in various states across the country, starting with the Commonwealth of Virginia as a follow-up to the Task Force's visit to Charlottesville in late 2014. Here you can interact with and begin to experience Virginia's story of health and connectivity.

Because consumers rely on many different types of resources to manage their health and everyday lives, and as the focus broadens to include population health, it is becoming clear that future healthcare systems will not be confined to hospitals, nor will health services only be provided by physicians. Rather, through broadband-based tools clinicians, social services providers, pharmacies, grocery stores, and fitness centers, for example, can work collaboratively and seamlessly with each other (as well as with consumers and caregivers) to help individuals reduce disease, reach personal health goals, and otherwise optimize health outcomes – in a cohesive, interconnected health and care ecosystem.

These collaborative health and care ecosystems will be enabled by broadband network infrastructure that facilitates the “on demand” sharing of electronic information, facilitates the provision of “e”-services, and supports interactive communication among patients, consumers, and others assisting with their care needs. In this broadband-enabled world, everyone can be connected to the people, services, and information they need to get well and stay healthy.

To begin to understand the degree to which this future is emerging, and in order to identify potential gaps or issues, Task Force staff collected data about select broadband-based health and technology metrics in Virginia. The curated maps provide a summary of our ongoing research, observations, and preliminary insights. Because Virginia’s story, like that of our nation, continues to emerge and evolve each day, neither the maps nor the insights derived from them provide an exact representation of the actual state of affairs in the Commonwealth. They do, however, provide a snapshot or high-level overview of Virginia's health connectivity story. We also present data in the form of interactive maps that you can mix, match, and explore to generate your own insights under the tab entitled “Explore the Maps in Detail.”

In the coming months, we plan to visit a number of other states and hope to share their narratives of health and connectivity. Join us as we journey and bring you the nation's health connectivity stories.

Explore the maps and tell us what you think.

Learn more about broadband-enabled health connectivity in Virginia.

Community Engagement

One of the goals of the Phase I Broadband-Health-Connectivity Snapshot maps is to elicit feedback on ways to improve the methodology for researching the current state of affairs at the intersection of broadband, connectivity, and health. We have made a first attempt to gather and display data in a way that is meaningful. Now, we would like to hear your thoughts. What other data points would be useful to display? What resources can be used to gather this data? Are there other changes in methodology you suggest? What additional insights can you elicit from these maps?

The Connect2HealthFCC Task Force welcomes your suggestions and feedback as we continue to develop the Broadband-Health-Connectivity Snapshot maps. Please submit comments to engageC2H@fcc.gov.

The following preliminary observations are gleaned from the maps above and are designed to spark a dialogue about how broadband connectivity can improve health and care.

Connectivity

  • According the U.S. Census Bureau, the estimated population of Virginia, in 2014, was 8,326,289.
  • As a general matter, while most Virginians have access to higher broadband download speeds, approximately 20 of Virginia’s 95 counties (21%) have common download speeds of <9Mbps. Lower download speed areas are not confined to areas of lowest population (rural).
  • The majority of Virginians live in counties where the most common download speeds are >25 Mbps.
  • Approximately 1.1 million Virginians live in counties where the most common download speeds are <25Mbps.
  • Only one Virginia county (Highland) has the most common download speed of <6Mbps. This may suggest that there are some unique challenges, needs, or issues in that county that are keeping it from achieving connectivity levels available in other parts of Virginia.

People

  • There are large areas within Virginia with relatively few medical providers despite significant numbers of people. As expected, physicians tend to cluster in areas of high population, thereby reinforcing existing resources. Broadband-enabled services might present opportunities in this context.
  • About 600,000 Virginians live in counties with provider availability below the national average of 2170:1.
  • Virginia’s largest county, Pittsylvania County, has a primary care provider ratio of 21000:1 and connectivity speeds of <25 Mbps.

Information

  • Not surprisingly, Virginia consumers searching online for chronic disease information tend to cluster in larger cities. However, several areas of higher population levels have little such searching occurring. Population density does not appear to be the only factor driving online health information searching in Virginia.
  • Relatively little searching for online health information about chronic disease is occurring in counties with most common download speeds between 10Mbps and 25Mbps.
  • In addition, there are several counties with common broadband download speeds in excess of 25Mbps that also have relatively little online health searching. Many of these counties are found in south-central and southern Virginia. Understanding why this is happening could be important for crafting effective strategies to ensure that all consumers can benefit from broadband-enabled health technologies.
  • It appears that counties with lower obesity prevalence also tend to have more online chronic disease searching occurring. More research in this area may help us to better understand if people who have more of an ability to use digital health tools (e.g., to conduct online health searching) are better able to avoid or prevent disease (i.e., by finding more resources to help them avoid obesity).

Resources Considered

  • Connectivity – Specifically, the most common download speed by county is assessed as a proxy measure of an individual’s ability to connect to broadband-enabled health services, should they exist, in his/her county.
  • People – To assess this domain, we determined the number of medical (MD/Doctor of Osteopathy (MD/DO)) providers available by county.
  • Information – To get at the issue of broadband-enabled access to health information, we determined the degree to which individuals were conducting online searches for chronic disease-related health information by county.

Data Sources

  • Connectivity Data – National Broadband Map, a collaboration between NTIA and the FCC.
  • Cartographic Data – Cartographic boundary shape files, United States Census Bureau.
  • People – Provider (MD/DO) distribution was obtained from the Virginia Board of Medicine. Data on the population to provider ratio was obtained from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation County Health Rankings.
  • Information – Google Trends service was used to assess relative search volume of specified terms related to chronic disease, namely: high blood pressure, hypertension, Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, heart disease, depression, arthritis, osteoporosis, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Google Trends service samples a percentage of all searches for popular search terms that have occurred in a given area, over a given timeframe (searches made by few people and those made by the same person over a short period of time are excluded). This data is then normalized to the most commonly searched terms by state and thereby generating a rank from 1-100. In the broadband health connectivity maps, these relative rankings are used as a proxy for assessing the overall extent to which people are using broadband to access online health information.