Just Around the Broadband Bend

It’s often said that life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. I had just such an experience when the Connect2HealthFCC Task Force went to Jackson (MS) and Sunflower County (MS). With creativity and courage, Mississippi is driving hard toward connecting every Mississippian to the power of broadband technology; bringing lifesaving diabetes care and remote monitoring to its most rural citizens using wireless broadband; equipping a new generation of physicians with the knowledge and skill to embrace telehealth tools and to use them to improve population health; and emphasizing data analytics around the social determinants of chronic disease.

On the way back to Jackson to catch the last flight home, we passed a sign saluting native son of Sunflower County and jazz/blues legend B.B. King. Among his many Grammy Award winning hits is the classic: “There must be a better world somewhere.” And, for Sunflower County and many other rural communities across the country, that better world is here and now...just around the broadband bend.