EDU 5353 Week 2 digital divide context

Digital divide context

·                     What “dividing factors” might be impacting community members in your context? Who is impacted by digital inequity? 

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) (2026) more than 1,900,000 Oklahomans live in communities without enough mental health professionals, cost was the most prevailing factor for not receiving treatment, one in five Oklahomans experience a mental illness each year, and 195,000 adult Oklahomans have serious mental illness.

According to Mack, Whetsell, & Graves (2022) rates of mental illness in rural areas are like the urban areas but suicide is nearly twice in rural communities. Barriers to mental health care in rural areas can be grouped into the following three groups:

Availability: fewer providers to include psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric nurse practitioners, and social workers.

Access: Traveling time, lack of public transportation, limited private transportation to include reliable vehicle, driver’s license, fuel and time. Adding to this is insufficient insurance coverage and limited broadband coverage.

Acceptability: stigma and health literacy issues, lack of privacy due to interconnected social networks, culturally competent providers.

The National Rural Health Association (NRHA) (2024) has recommended support for broadband access, affordable connectivity, Medicare telehealth flexibilities, reimbursement to providers, enable telehealth adoption of rural health care, and ease cross-state licensure for providers of rural residents.

I serve as tele health psychiatric consultant for three rural communities in different counties of Oklahoma. Following is a table showing demographic, social, and economic information taken from Census Reporter (n.d.).

Town

Anadarko

Fairfax

Stroud

Population

5,627

1,018

2,771

Square miles

7.1

0.8

11.6

People per square mile

792

1,329.4

239.4

Median age

35

44.5

36.6

Per capita income ($)

21,630

25,092

29,318

Median household income ($)

43,668

39,063

54,519

Poverty or people below poverty line (%)

27.5

22.9

18.3

Transportation to work (minutes)

18.8

24.4

2.8

Number of households

1,845

396

1,055

Persons per household

3

2.5

2.6

Number of housing units

2,422

586

1,267

Median value of owner-occupied house units ($)

90,000

53,500

120,000

High school grad or higher education (%)

89.9

83.4

92.2

Bachelor’s degree or higher education (%)

12

12.1

14.8

 

·                     Findings associated with challenges created by the COVID pandemic relate to your community?

Due to social distance during the covid-19 pandemic many adjustments were made to provide health services; to include law adjustments, reimbursement polices adjustments, and provider practices adjustments. There was an increase in telehealth encounters of 766 percents in the first three months of the pandemic. The telehealth services under Medicare grew for both urban and rural beneficiaries but the rural grew less.

The National Rural Health Association (NRHA) (2024) had recommended support for broadband access, affordable connectivity, Medicare telehealth flexibilities, reimbursement to providers, enable telehealth adoption of rural health care, and ease cross-state licensure for providers of rural residents

·                     What stands out from this week's readings associated with your context?  How does your community fair with regarding to digital equity?

Gallardo (2022) talks about the digital divide index (DDI), which is a value from 0 to 100, where 100 indicated the highest digital divide. The DDI is composed of two scores. One score is the infrastructure/adoption (INFA) score, and the other score is the socioeconomic (SE) score. The INFA score has four variables: houses without a computing device, without internet, average download and average upload speed. The SE score has five variables: population age 65 and older, population 25 and older with less than high school, individual poverty rate, noninstitutionalized civilians with a disability, and digital inequality or internet income ratio measure.

Gallardo (2022) reported that the digital divide affects the most the rural counties but minorities in urban areas were affected as well. The most affected were poor, disabled, older, less educated, and lower labor force participation ones.

According to Brown (2020) the digital divide is characterized by two problems: one is the limited and costly infrastructure of internet and the other is the digital literary of the community.

 

 

References

Census Reporter. (n.d.-a). Anadarko, OK. Retrieved from https://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US4002050-anadarko-ok/

Census Reporter. (n.d.-b). Fairfax, OK. Retrieved from https://censusreporter.org/profiles/ 6000US4024850-fairfax-ok/

Census Reporter. (n.d.-c). Stroud, OK. Retrieved from https://censusreporter.org/profiles/ 6000US4071000-stroud-ok/

Gallardo R. (2022). The State of the Digital Divide in the United States. Retrieved from: https://pcrd.purdue.edu/the-state-of-the-digital-divide-in-the-united-states/Links to an external site.

Mack, B., Whetsell, H., Graves, J. A. (2022). National Rural Health Association Policy Brief. Mental health in rural areas. Retrieved from https://www.ruralhealth.us/getmedia/cf3c3922-25cb-49a0-bb04-0bad81d634f9/NRHA-Mental-health-in-rural-areas-policy-brief-2022.pdf  

National Alliance in Mental Illness. (2025). Mental Health in Oklahoma. Retrieved from https://www.nami.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Oklahoma-GRPA-Data-Sheet-8.5-x-11-wide.pdf

National Rural Health Association. National Rural Health Association Policy Brief. Impacts of telehealth on rural health care access. Retrieved from https://www.ruralhealth.us/nationalruralhealth/media/documents/nrha-impact-of-telehealth-policy-on-rural-health-access-2024.pdf

 

 

 

Comments

  1. Dennis GriffithJanuary 23, 2026 at 7:50 AM

    With the lack of rural hospitals, telehealth is becoming even more important in our rural communities. When people are unable to access digital spaces, then they could lack the ability to access their health information or even see a doctor.

    ReplyDelete
  2. MonicaTubbesingJanuary 23, 2026 at 5:35 PM

    Dennis,
    You are right. I only see patients who are hospitalized through the hospital's equipment/internet. Once the patient leaves the hospital I am not able to follow up with him/her. I am thinking about to providing outpatient services, in a clinic to those communities. It may be a day a week at each place. I am thinking about a call to action for myself.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

EDU 5373 Igniting your leadership with technology - Fostering emotional intelligence

  Igniting your leadership with technology   ·                      What do you notice about the experiences and path(s) taken by the interviewee(s) that result in their elevation to decision-making roles and educational technology experts? The utilization of technology and leadership goes hand in hand. In other words, the use and technology and effective instruction are interconnected. Technology can be used daily, at specific times when there is a need to accomplish visions or goals of an organization, when there is need to share specific knowledge, to enhance leadership skills, or to improve inclusion of technology in teaching. ·                      What connections if any are made by the interviewee to the ISTE Standards or Essential Conditions to support technology use and d...
Read more

Tubbesing Monica EDUC 5333 week1

Provide a brief biography. What do you teach or what role do you play in your organization? Biography: My name is Monica. I am an advanced practice registered nurse (APRN), also known as nurse practitioner (NP). I work as an independent contractor. I currently have two part time jobs. In one of my jobs I function as a psychiatric mental health consultant. I do consultations via telehealth to help people with psychiatric conditions for patients hospitalized in rural hospitals. My second job is helping in an addiction treatment center every other week. I would like to become a nurse educator. I am preparing to take the Certified Nurse Educator (CNE) certification test and I therefore decided to dive into this Southeastern Oklahoma State University education program. Reflecting on my teaching skills, I like to spend time with my patients who have questions about the medical or psychiatric conditions to help them understand the disease process and the possible plan of care. I sometimes use...
Read more

Monica Tubbesing Blog TPACK

Monica Tubbesing's TPACK discussion. The Technology, Pedagogical, and Cont ent Knowledge (TPACK) is a framework first introduced by Punia Mishra and Mathew J. Ko ehler in 2006. There are three domains that are interconnected and should be balanced to integrate technology into the classroom. The domains are a) Content Knowledge (CK), b) Pedagogical Knowledge PK), and c) Technological Knowledge. This framework is visually learned by the intersection of three circles , each circle representing a domain (Kurt, 2018) .   The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) developed seven competencies or standards for students . Many countries have embraced these competences. These standards prepare students to navigate through technology to shift fr om a teacher learning environment into a student driven environment.     The ISTE seven competencies for students are a) Empowered Learner, b) Digital Citizenship , c) Knowledge Constructor, d) Innovative Designer...
Read more