APT and The Children’s Partnership joined forces Thursday in the latest episode of the Broadband Changed My Life!TM Brown Bag Luncheon Series. Laurie Lipper and Ken Kelly shared with us the dramatic benefits of computer and Internet access for kids. From research for homework assignments, exam preparation, access to health care, civic participation and job preparation, today’s low income kids are using the Internet to move out of poverty and grab opportunity at every stage of their young lives. One of the most powerful statements made was that “digital opportunity for kids is the equity issue of the 21st century.” And while we’ve made great strides in extending home broadband access for African Americans and Latinos, we still have a long way to go to get affordable Internet access to all kids.
Joy Howell
Director
Broadband Changed My Life!TM Campaign
The “Big Apple” is keeping the doctor away by using broadband to emphasize prevention. In recent years, New York City has improved health care for over 200,000 patients by equipping more than 200 primary care providers with secure electronic health records (EHR). Today America's largest city serves as a model for the rest of the country on how health information technology can put prevention first, while also improving care. With a nationwide EHR, the U.S. could save almost $150 billion in better efficiencies, shorter hospitalizations and fewer medical errors, according to the RAND Corporation’s estimates.
Read more:
Roadmap for Health IT Offered in NYC
Government Technology, April 16, 2008
Joy Howell
Director
Broadband Changed My Life!TM Campaign
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies is hosting a terrific event this Thursday at the National Press Club at 9:30 a.m. on “Broadband, New Media and Minorities in America”. This panel discussion promises to be an interesting analysis of the impact of broadband on minorities, and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is the keynote speaker. The event is open to the public, and rsvp calls will be taken at 202-715-7832.
We’ll see you all there!
The recent New York Times article on municipal Wi-Fi networks fading out demonstrated the enormous impact of broadband on people's lives. Fifteen-year old Cesar DeLaRosa voiced concern that if he didn't have Wi-Fi Internet access, he would have to ride the bus after dark to get his science paper on global warming completed, and "around here, that's not always real safe" he said. But let's look at the numbers. African American access to the Internet has tripled over the last few years and approximately 66% of Latinos with home access to the Internet now use broadband, which is all trending in the right direction. But what about kids like Cesar whose families don't have Internet of any kind, much less broadband? Kids who depend on free Wi-Fi networks to do their homework and keep up in class? Kids rely on broadband for education and research, and we need to find ways to make investments in the necessary networks attractive so that EVERYONE has broadband.
Joy Howell
Director
Broadband Changed My Life! Campaign
APT’s former president Dr. Max Stachura, one of the pioneers of telehealth at the Medical College of Georgia, and Joy Howell, campaign director of Broadband Changed My Life! were interviewed yesterday by Health Radio Network on the use of broadband in health care applications. Both of them pointed to the health care cost savings estimated at $800 billion and the major benefits of remote health care monitoring, which alone could reduce health care expenses by 25% or $350 million annually. Dr. Stachura gave examples of stroke diagnosis and treatment en route to the hospital via broadband. Patients have a three hour window from the onset of a stroke to get effective treatment and knowing what kind of stroke it is determines which drug is administered. And now patients no longer just get treatment in physicians’ offices. We are moving to treatment wherever the patient is---anywhere, anytime, anybody healthcare.
Howell talked about the people who wrote in describing the impact of broadband on their lives in the recent Broadband Changed My Life! contest. She said that many people talked about using broadband to research health care options and treatment, some talked about accessing health care services from their homes via broadband. And some people talked about how wonderful it is to have remote access to specialists. One woman who used to drive her son over 300 miles to a pediatric specialist now can drive ten minutes to a clinic and have him checked by a physician 600 miles away. Yes, broadband is changing people’s lives—for the better!
APT’s Joy Howell, director of Broadband Changed My Life! campaign, was interviewed this week by WMIS-FM in Minnesota, a female-oriented lifestyle station a few hours from Minneapolis. The topic was how broadband is changing education. Howell talked about the U.S. having the largest broadband market in the world, and that broadband is enabling many people to utilize distance learning, earning degrees from educational institutions thousands of miles away from them. Vinnie Valente was a contestant in the nationwide Broadband Changed My Life! contest, and proudly said that he was able to earn two associate degrees from a community college in Ann Arbor Michigan while living in Rhode Island. Parents are able to home school their children using broadband. One student, Stephen Wooten, won second prize in the contest because he came from a rural area near Appalachia and his family got broadband when he was in high school. He said “my mind became the child sponge it once was” and he surfed the Net learning about all kinds of topics for hours, ultimately deciding he was a smart kid who should go to college. He was the first person in his family to attend college, and went to Appalachian State University. And then teachers and students can connect to each other from remote locations to enrich the learning experience by using high speed Internet access, sharing ideas and learning from each other. Another example is the PEBBLEs program, which using robots with broadband to connect sick kids in their hospital rooms to their classrooms so they don’t have to fall behind in school. Yes, broadband is transforming people’s lives every day.
In the latest version of the digital divide, called the “participation gap,” we have one more reason that everyone should have access to affordable broadband service. The National Education Association has done a great job in this article of showcasing how students who have 24-hour-seven-day a week access to high-speed Internet are not only better informed, but also better content creators – publishers, movie makers, artists, song creators and story tellers. "Gordon Stewart, 16, has his own computer in his bedroom in Arlington, Virginia, as do his two sisters. He uses the Internet for homework, but spends hours online long after his studies are completed—if he's not chatting with his friends or updating his blog he's busy posting mash-ups to YouTube or playing elaborate, multi-partner video games.
Students like Gordon are so digitally connected it's as if they were born with their own ringtones and MySpace pages. But not everyone in 'Generation Next' has access to this seemingly ubiquitous technology." ...
Access is power to break social and economic inequities.
Joy Howell
Campaign Director
Broadband Changed My Life
The public-private approach to identifying broadband demand and availability and working with a number of community sectors paid off big time in broadband penetration in the states that have tried it, Capitol Hill staff and friends heard Thursday from speakers at a briefing in the Capitol. Sponsored by Connected Nation, the Alliance for Public Technology and the Communication Workers of America, the briefing highlighted a new economic report projecting the estimated economic impact of expanded broadband deployment at $134 billion per year for the U.S.
Other numbers to note:
--$662 in reduced health care costs
--$92 billion through an additional 2.4 million jobs created or retained
--$35.2 billion in value from $3.8 billion more hours saved per year freom accessing broadband at home
--$6.4 billion per year in mileage savings from preventing unnecessary driving
--$18 million in carbon credits associated with 3.2 billion fewer lbs of CO2 emissions per year in the U.S.
With numbers like these, can we afford not to encourage deployment?
Joy Howell
Campaign Director
Broadband Changed My Life!
You just may want to follow the instructions of the Senate Commerce Committee website when it invites you to add to your calendar, Thursday’s (Feb. 14) hearing, entitled “One Year to the DTV Transition: Consumers, Broadcasters, and Converter Boxes. As the hearing title implies, February 17, 2009 is the deadline that Congress set for freeing up spectrum -- currently used for TV broadcasters -- that can be used to provide wireless broadband access to rural and hard-to-reach areas at a reasonable cost. The Valentines Day hearing is one of two DTV transition hearings scheduled this week. The House Telecommunications and Internet Subcommittee will hold the first hearing on Feb. 13. The goal of both hearings is to address consumer confusion about what they need to keep their analog TV sets working when all TV broadcasts become digital.
One Year to the DTV Transition: Consumers, Broadcasters, and Converter Boxes
Full Committee
Thursday, February 14, 2008
10:00 AM
SR - 253
The Committee will examine U.S. readiness for the nationwide transition from analog television broadcasting to digital television (DTV) broadcasting. With the February 17, 2009 transition date now just one year away, the hearing will focus on consumer awareness, the role of broadcasters and the Federal Communications Commission, and the status of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration converter box program.
Witness List Released for House Subcommittee DTV-Oversight Hearing
House Telecommunications & Internet Subcommittee Set for Hearing Wednesday
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 2/11/2008 4:44:00 PM
The House Telecommunications & Internet Subcommittee released its witness list for the digital-TV-transition oversight hearing Feb. 13 and it looks like a reunion tour of the coupon-box-kickoff program last week in Washington, D.C.
The chairs of the subcommittee and parent Energy & Commerce Committee are concerned that with one year to go until the switch to digital, not enough has been done to educate consumers.
It will be the fourth DTV transition hearing for the Energy & Commerce Committee this session.
Heading off the hearing on the first panel will be the heads of the two key government players, Meredith Baker, head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and Kevin Martin, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
Panel two features key industry players: Kyle McSlarrow, president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association; David Rehr, president of the National Association of Broadcasters; Roy Bruno, president of the Community Broadcasters Association; Mark Jackson, president of EchoStar Technologies; Tom Romeo from IBM; Laurence Harris, vice president of RadioShack; and Chris Murray of Consumers Union.
Joy Howell
Campaign Director
Broadband Changed My Life!
USDA and FCC recently kicked off the “Broadband Opportunities for Rural America” website. The site is a one-stop shop for resources of both agencies. It includes information on the different kinds of broadband service, government funding for services, policy announcements and data on broadband deployment.
Click here for more info.
Joy Howell
Campaign Director
Broadband Changed My Life
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