Previously submitted to: JMIR Formative Research (no longer under consideration since Dec 23, 2024)
Date Submitted: Apr 22, 2024
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Digital Health Equity: Broadband Access and Associations with Health Outcomes in Priority Counties
ABSTRACT
Background:
The relationship between broadband access and health outcomes is an emerging field of interest within public health research. In an increasingly digital world, it is important to understand how to best allocate broadband resources to maximize health impact. This study specifically investigates how levels of broadband connectivity are associated with health metrics such as diabetes, obesity, and preventable hospitalizations in counties identified as having critical needs by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Objective:
To understand the longitudinal relationship between broadband access and health outcomes in priority counties, specifically diabetes, obesity, and preventable hospitalizations.
Methods:
This study investigates the relationship between broadband access and diabetes, obesity, and preventable hospitalizations from 2017-2020. Using regression models to analyze data from 172 counties identified by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as having critical needs (i.e. low broadband access and high disease rates), we explore how broadband subscriptions and speeds affect health outcomes, controlling for county characteristics.
Results:
A 1% increase in broadband subscriptions was associated with a 0.6% decrease in the odds ratio [OR] for diabetes (OR=0.994, 95% CI 0.992-0.997). A 1% increase in broadband subscriptions corresponded to a 0.6% (standardized ???? coefficient=0.994, 95% CI 0.992-0.997, P<.001) reduction in preventable hospitalizations. No significant relationship was found between broadband and obesity rates.
Conclusions:
Our data suggests that increased access to broadband may be correlated to decreased rates of diabetes and preventable hospitalizations in FCC priority counties. The study highlights the importance of considering county characteristics in public health outreach and supports broadband access’s potential to improve health equity by addressing disparities in rural, persistent poverty counties.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.