March 25, 2025
Community Health Corner
The National Extension Framework for Health Equity and Well-being recommends using community development strategies and health literacy programs for everyone’s health. From urban, metro, suburban, rural and frontier locations, Extension works in partnership with communities to deliver meaningful and relevant programs and initiatives to keep health closer to home. The following resources help us improve well-being for all, and achieve Healthy People 2030 objectives.
Broadband Deserts Overlap with Health Provider Shortage Areas: About 2.7 million Americans live in counties where broadband deserts overlap with shortages in primary care providers and behavior health specialists, according to a data analysis from KFF Health News. In 2023, the most recent year of available data, 83% of residents in non-metropolitan, or rural, counties had access to broadband, compared to over 90% of metropolitan residents. Healthcare provider shortages compound the challenges associated with unreliable broadband. Unreliable broadband widens existing health disparities, especially between rural and urban residents. See the national interactive map of counties that have both limited broadband access and healthcare shortage areas and the KFF full report here. KFF Health News classified counties as shortage areas if fewer than 70% of households had reliable broadband, if the ratio between Medicaid enrollees per primary care provider was in the bottom third of counties, and if the ratio between behavioral health providers per resident was also in the bottom third of counties.
April is Alcohol Awareness Month: In January, 2025 the US Surgeon General released a comprehensive report about the link between alcohol consumption and cancer risk. There is reputable and reliable evidence for the causal link between alcohol consumption and increased risk for at least seven different types of cancer, including breast (in women), colorectum, esophagus, voice box, liver, mouth, and throat. Learn more about the report and how to create awareness of physical, mental and social health risks to uncontrolled (i.e., binging) alcohol consumption here. The Kansas Prevention Collaborative has information about local programs, coalitions and services about alcohol consumption.
Hearing Can be Monitored Like Blood Pressure and Vision: Health experts at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have developed a Hearing Number, app so that anyone can find out their own Hearing Number using a smartphone. Your Hearing Number is a measure in decibels of the softest speech sound you can hear in each ear—also known as the 4-frequency pure tone average (PTA4). Hearing Numbers range from -10 to 85 and can differ for each of your ears. The higher your Hearing Numbers, the harder it will be to hear and communicate in noisy places.
How to get your Hearing Numbers: Download the Hearing Number app, created by the Bloomberg School. It’s free, easy to use, and doesn’t collect any personal data. All you need is an iOS or Android device, a pair of headphones, and about 4–5 minutes in a quiet space.
For more information, contact Elaine Johannes, ejohanne@ksu.edu; and Stephanie Gutierrez, smgutier@k-state.edu