American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds helped the Arizona Regional Economic Development Foundation (AREDF) meet it’s pillar of providing access to health care with supplemental funds for telemedicine.
You see, telemedicine requires connectivity, something that is not a given in rural America, or in rural Arizona. In 2018, the Pew Research Center reported that 24% of rural adults said internet connectivity was a major problem.
The AREDF said that without the funding from the Biden administration, they would not have been able to get the project across the finish line; the administration recognized this with their earmarking of some ARPA funds specifically for broadband to support telehealth projects.
Community leaders across the political spectrum support federal investments in infrastructure that enable telehealth; Senator Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a state led by deeply conservative elected officials, is vocal about the critical nature of telehealth in rural communities and the necessity of funding to ensure it is available.
