State seeks to bridge digital divide for farm workers

By Jaymie Baxley

Many states more than 75,000 agricultural workers lack high-speed internet, limiting their access to digital services that have proven effective improve health outcomes for residents of rural communities.

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Rural Health hopes to bridge the gap with a ‘digital equity initiative’ funded by the National Institutes of Health. Over the next five years, DHHS will receive nearly $6 million from the federal agency to help connect farmworkers and their families to affordable broadband.

“The Internet is an essential service,” said Natalie Rivera, project manager for the initiative. “It’s really part of the social determinants of health in making sure that people have access to things like health education resources, or that they’re just able to communicate with their families.”

While farmers and farmworkers have long been hampered by gaps in the state’s broadband infrastructure, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the problem. Rivera said DHHS has started “trying different things to make sure farmworkers have access to the internet” during the pandemic.

One of the most successful experiments was partnering with local organizations to lend mobile hotspots to migrant camp workers, who are not required to provide internet under current migrant housing standards. migrants. But without access to the internet, migrant workers are often “unable to reach health care providers, communicate about outbreaks, request outreach services, and stay in touch with family and loved ones,” according to the report. . NC Farmworker Health Program Website.

“We wanted to make sure that community health workers could still be in contact with them,” Rivera said of the hotspot loan program. “Obviously, we had safety in mind because, at that time, foreign workers were at very high risk of spreading infectious diseases due to collective housing. »

Hoping to build on this experience, DHHS applied for funding through the NIH’s Common Fund Community Partnerships to Advance Science for Society program. Stylized as “ComPASS” in advertising materials, the newly launched program seeks to “enable the search for sustainable solutions that promote health equity to create lasting change.”

“We saw there was an opportunity there to improve telehealth and internet access, and that’s exactly what we’re trying to do,” Rivera said. “We don’t want this to just be an effort to fight COVID. We must ensure that this continues and that we work to reduce the digital divide that agricultural workers suffer.

In late September, DHHS learned its proposal was among 26 projects selected for funding. The department has tapped East Carolina University and North Carolina State University as research partners for this initiative.

“This investment from the National Institutes of Health will transform the health and well-being of our state’s agricultural workers who keep the nation food secure,” Kody H. Kinsley, head of state DHHS, said in a statement after the announcement of the price. . “This collaborative effort will help close the health care coverage gap by increasing access to care when and where workers and their families need it.”

First steps

Rivera said the first two years of the five-year project will be spent conducting a “community assessment,” with researchers gathering feedback from farmworkers and health care providers to determine what the next steps should be.

“It’s really about better understanding their challenges around not only internet access, but also telehealth,” she said. “This is a community-led project and we don’t want to just come up with something and say, ‘Oh, this is what will work.’ We really want to make sure we have an impact.

After that, the initiative will enter what Rivera called the “intervention phase.”

“We don’t know yet exactly what that will look like,” she said. “I think we will be able to uncover some of the biggest challenges and, with everyone’s help, we will be able to decide what the best options are for advancing interventions to support both internet access and telehealth.”

Although Rivera acknowledged that DHHS “may not necessarily be able to establish lines” connecting workers to high-speed internet, she said the agency would work closely with the NC Division of Broadband and Digital Equity to “ensure farmers are included in expansion plans” for the service in the future.

“When we built this app, the focus was on improving digital health because it is a huge topic that is changing and evolving as we speak,” she said . “But we also need to add that layer of improving internet access, because that’s a big challenge as well.”

National question

Agriculture is a A $100 billion a year industry for North Carolina, and the sector is intrinsically linked to the livelihoods of many of the state’s rural counties. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that North Carolina was the ninth largest state in terms of cash receipts from agricultural production in 2022.

Nationally, farmworkers are at increased risk of certain health problems. They suffer from high blood pressure and are more likely to contract infectious diseases than people in other occupations, according to the NC Farmworker Health Program.

Mental health is also a concern. About 40 percent of farmworkers suffer from depression and 30 percent report feelings of anxiety.

Rivera hopes the digital equity initiative can serve as a model for other states that rely heavily on agriculture.

“That’s really what’s exciting about this thing,” she said. “This is a national award that we can learn from and hopefully spread the information across the country so other people can implement it.”

She added: “This is not just a problem exclusive to North Carolina. I can only imagine the broadband challenges in other states.