skip to Main Content
design lab connect2health national cancer institute

UC San Diego Design Lab Joins FCC, NCI to Champion Critical Role of Broadband in Rural Cancer Care

UC San Diego Design Lab Joins FCC, NCI to Champion Critical Role of Broadband in Rural Cancer Care

UC San Diego Design Lab Joins FCC, NCI to Champion Critical Role of Broadband in Rural Cancer Care

The Federal Communications Commission’s Connect2Health Task Force (C2HFCC) announced last week that the FCC and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) have joined forces, signing a memorandum of understanding to focus on how increasing broadband access and adoption in rural areas can improve the lives of rural cancer patients.

As an inaugural project under the memorandum of understanding, the agencies have convened a public-private consortium to help bridge the broadband health connectivity gap in Appalachia, taking another concrete step toward closing the digital divide. The University of California San Diego Design Lab will lead coordination and intervention development for the consortium, partnering with the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, the University of Kentucky’s Markey Cancer Center and Amgen.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Americans living in rural areas are still more likely to die of cancer than their counterparts in urban settings, which sets them apart from the many communities nationwide that have experienced a 20 percent decrease in cancer mortality over the past two decades.  Initial analysis of broadband data and cancer data shows that these rural “cancer hotspots” also face major gaps in broadband access and adoption, often putting promising connected care solutions far out of reach.

In Appalachia, the cancer picture is bleaker than in other rural parts of the country. Research from University of Virginia School of Medicine has shown that between 1969 and 2011, cancer incidence declined in every region of the country except rural Appalachia, and mortality rates soared.

“The quality, length and even value of life should not be determined by where you happen to be born or live,” said Michele Ellison, Chair of the Connect2HealthFCC Task Force.  “And yet that’s exactly what’s happening.  Nowhere is this more acutely felt than in the rural parts of our country.  Too many rural Americans suffer with late cancer diagnoses, unrelenting symptoms, and inadequate access to care.”

The project—titled L.A.U.N.C.H. (Linking & Amplifying User-Centered Networks through Connected Health): A Demonstration of Broadband-Enabled Health for Rural Populations in Appalachia—will target areas that face the dual challenge of higher cancer mortality rates and lower levels of broadband access. The initial geographic focus is planned for rural Kentucky. Highlighting the power of public-private collaborations, current project stakeholders include cancer experts, researchers, technologists and industry representatives from the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center (a NCI-designated cancer center), Amgen and the UC San Diego Design Lab.

Members of the UC San Diego team are led by Eliah Aronoff-Spencer, a professor in the UC San Diego School of Medicine, and include Design Lab Director Don Norman (a professor emeritus in the UC San Diego Department of Cognitive Science) as well as Prof. Kevin Patrick, Adjunct Prof. Jacqueline Kerr and Prof. Elena Martinez, all of the UC San Diego department of Family Medicine & Public Health. Aronoff-Spencer, Norman and Patrick are members of the Design Lab and all team members are affiliates of the UC San Diego Qualcomm Institute, where the Design Lab is based.

Dr. Aronoff-Spencer points out that “The Design Lab’s approach — Human-Centered Design — is especially well suited for the complex sociotechnical issues involved in healthcare in rural, underserved areas of the country. We start with observational studies and quantitative data fusion which drives mutual development of new procedures and technologies that can be prototyped, tested, integrated and further refined until they are ready to be deployed with our partners.”

“Through this strategic collaboration, we will work to bring the critical connectivity piece to the cancer puzzle,” continued Ellison. “Increasingly, broadband-enabled technologies are transforming the way cancer patients and survivors better manage, monitor, and treat their symptoms — helping them to live longer, better quality lives. But for rural Americans with limited access to broadband, many of these connected care solutions are unavailable.  Better connectivity holds the promise of bringing first class care and treatment to anyone, anywhere.”

“Research suggests that when patients report symptoms electronically to their care providers they are almost twice as likely to report improvements to health-related quality of life than those in a disconnected control group,” said Bradford Hesse, Ph.D., Chief, Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch, National Cancer Institute. “Electronically connected patients were also less likely to be admitted to the emergency room and had greater survival rates than patients in the control group. Collaborating with the FCC is a vital step for improving cancer outcomes for all Americans, regardless of where they live.”

The President’s Cancer Panel report, Improving Cancer-Related Outcomes with Connected Health, specifically urged more cross-sector collaboration among those in the healthcare, biomedical research, and technology fields as essential to the future of cancer care. Consistent with this blueprint, the multi-year, cross-sector L.A.U.N.C.H. project will focus on how broadband connectivity can be leveraged to improve symptom management for rural cancer patients, presenting a compelling case for greater deployment and adoption of broadband in rural areas.  Symptom management is one of the key priorities of the 2016 Blue Ribbon Panel, a group of scientific experts created to advise the National Cancer Advisory Board.

Additional information about the FCC-NCI memorandum and the broadband health demonstration project will be available online at https://www.fcc.gov/health/cancer.  Information about “critical need” counties at the intersection of broadband and health is available at https://www.fcc.gov/health/maps/priority-and-ruralpriority-2017.

The Connect2HealthFCC Task Force also encourages all stakeholders interested in broadband health projects for other critical need areas ― including fixed or mobile broadband providers, health technology companies, device manufacturers, and health care facilities ― to contact the Task Force via e-mail at engageC2H@fcc.gov. It would be useful for stakeholders to include information about broadband health needs and opportunities in particular critical need areas and offer concrete proposals on how they are seeking to address them via public-private partnerships or other models.

The Federal Communications Commission’s Connect2Health Task Force (C2HFCC) announced last week that the FCC and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) have joined forces, signing a memorandum of understanding to focus on how increasing broadband access and adoption in rural areas can improve the lives of rural cancer patients.

As an inaugural project under the memorandum of understanding, the agencies have convened a public-private consortium to help bridge the broadband health connectivity gap in Appalachia, taking another concrete step toward closing the digital divide. The University of California San Diego Design Lab will lead coordination and intervention development for the consortium, partnering with the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, the University of Kentucky’s Markey Cancer Center and Amgen.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Americans living in rural areas are still more likely to die of cancer than their counterparts in urban settings, which sets them apart from the many communities nationwide that have experienced a 20 percent decrease in cancer mortality over the past two decades.  Initial analysis of broadband data and cancer data shows that these rural “cancer hotspots” also face major gaps in broadband access and adoption, often putting promising connected care solutions far out of reach.

In Appalachia, the cancer picture is bleaker than in other rural parts of the country. Research from University of Virginia School of Medicine has shown that between 1969 and 2011, cancer incidence declined in every region of the country except rural Appalachia, and mortality rates soared.

“The quality, length and even value of life should not be determined by where you happen to be born or live,” said Michele Ellison, Chair of the Connect2HealthFCC Task Force.  “And yet that’s exactly what’s happening.  Nowhere is this more acutely felt than in the rural parts of our country.  Too many rural Americans suffer with late cancer diagnoses, unrelenting symptoms, and inadequate access to care.”

The project—titled L.A.U.N.C.H. (Linking & Amplifying User-Centered Networks through Connected Health): A Demonstration of Broadband-Enabled Health for Rural Populations in Appalachia—will target areas that face the dual challenge of higher cancer mortality rates and lower levels of broadband access. The initial geographic focus is planned for rural Kentucky. Highlighting the power of public-private collaborations, current project stakeholders include cancer experts, researchers, technologists and industry representatives from the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center (a NCI-designated cancer center), Amgen and the UC San Diego Design Lab.

Members of the UC San Diego team are led by Eliah Aronoff-Spencer, a professor in the UC San Diego School of Medicine, and include Design Lab Director Don Norman (a professor emeritus in the UC San Diego Department of Cognitive Science) as well as Prof. Kevin Patrick, Adjunct Prof. Jacqueline Kerr and Prof. Elena Martinez, all of the UC San Diego department of Family Medicine & Public Health. Aronoff-Spencer, Norman and Patrick are members of the Design Lab and all team members are affiliates of the UC San Diego Qualcomm Institute, where the Design Lab is based.

Dr. Aronoff-Spencer points out that “The Design Lab’s approach — Human-Centered Design — is especially well suited for the complex sociotechnical issues involved in healthcare in rural, underserved areas of the country. We start with observational studies and quantitative data fusion which drives mutual development of new procedures and technologies that can be prototyped, tested, integrated and further refined until they are ready to be deployed with our partners.”

“Through this strategic collaboration, we will work to bring the critical connectivity piece to the cancer puzzle,” continued Ellison. “Increasingly, broadband-enabled technologies are transforming the way cancer patients and survivors better manage, monitor, and treat their symptoms — helping them to live longer, better quality lives. But for rural Americans with limited access to broadband, many of these connected care solutions are unavailable.  Better connectivity holds the promise of bringing first class care and treatment to anyone, anywhere.”

“Research suggests that when patients report symptoms electronically to their care providers they are almost twice as likely to report improvements to health-related quality of life than those in a disconnected control group,” said Bradford Hesse, Ph.D., Chief, Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch, National Cancer Institute. “Electronically connected patients were also less likely to be admitted to the emergency room and had greater survival rates than patients in the control group. Collaborating with the FCC is a vital step for improving cancer outcomes for all Americans, regardless of where they live.”

The President’s Cancer Panel report, Improving Cancer-Related Outcomes with Connected Health, specifically urged more cross-sector collaboration among those in the healthcare, biomedical research, and technology fields as essential to the future of cancer care. Consistent with this blueprint, the multi-year, cross-sector L.A.U.N.C.H. project will focus on how broadband connectivity can be leveraged to improve symptom management for rural cancer patients, presenting a compelling case for greater deployment and adoption of broadband in rural areas.  Symptom management is one of the key priorities of the 2016 Blue Ribbon Panel, a group of scientific experts created to advise the National Cancer Advisory Board.

Additional information about the FCC-NCI memorandum and the broadband health demonstration project will be available online at https://www.fcc.gov/health/cancer.  Information about “critical need” counties at the intersection of broadband and health is available at https://www.fcc.gov/health/maps/priority-and-ruralpriority-2017.

The Connect2HealthFCC Task Force also encourages all stakeholders interested in broadband health projects for other critical need areas ― including fixed or mobile broadband providers, health technology companies, device manufacturers, and health care facilities ― to contact the Task Force via e-mail at engageC2H@fcc.gov. It would be useful for stakeholders to include information about broadband health needs and opportunities in particular critical need areas and offer concrete proposals on how they are seeking to address them via public-private partnerships or other models.

The Federal Communications Commission’s Connect2Health Task Force (C2HFCC) announced last week that the FCC and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) have joined forces, signing a memorandum of understanding to focus on how increasing broadband access and adoption in rural areas can improve the lives of rural cancer patients.

As an inaugural project under the memorandum of understanding, the agencies have convened a public-private consortium to help bridge the broadband health connectivity gap in Appalachia, taking another concrete step toward closing the digital divide. The University of California San Diego Design Lab will lead coordination and intervention development for the consortium, partnering with the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, the University of Kentucky’s Markey Cancer Center and Amgen.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Americans living in rural areas are still more likely to die of cancer than their counterparts in urban settings, which sets them apart from the many communities nationwide that have experienced a 20 percent decrease in cancer mortality over the past two decades.  Initial analysis of broadband data and cancer data shows that these rural “cancer hotspots” also face major gaps in broadband access and adoption, often putting promising connected care solutions far out of reach.

In Appalachia, the cancer picture is bleaker than in other rural parts of the country. Research from University of Virginia School of Medicine has shown that between 1969 and 2011, cancer incidence declined in every region of the country except rural Appalachia, and mortality rates soared.

“The quality, length and even value of life should not be determined by where you happen to be born or live,” said Michele Ellison, Chair of the Connect2HealthFCC Task Force.  “And yet that’s exactly what’s happening.  Nowhere is this more acutely felt than in the rural parts of our country.  Too many rural Americans suffer with late cancer diagnoses, unrelenting symptoms, and inadequate access to care.”

The project—titled L.A.U.N.C.H. (Linking & Amplifying User-Centered Networks through Connected Health): A Demonstration of Broadband-Enabled Health for Rural Populations in Appalachia—will target areas that face the dual challenge of higher cancer mortality rates and lower levels of broadband access. The initial geographic focus is planned for rural Kentucky. Highlighting the power of public-private collaborations, current project stakeholders include cancer experts, researchers, technologists and industry representatives from the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center (a NCI-designated cancer center), Amgen and the UC San Diego Design Lab.

Members of the UC San Diego team are led by Eliah Aronoff-Spencer, a professor in the UC San Diego School of Medicine, and include Design Lab Director Don Norman (a professor emeritus in the UC San Diego Department of Cognitive Science) as well as Prof. Kevin Patrick, Adjunct Prof. Jacqueline Kerr and Prof. Elena Martinez, all of the UC San Diego department of Family Medicine & Public Health. Aronoff-Spencer, Norman and Patrick are members of the Design Lab and all team members are affiliates of the UC San Diego Qualcomm Institute, where the Design Lab is based.

Dr. Aronoff-Spencer points out that “The Design Lab’s approach — Human-Centered Design — is especially well suited for the complex sociotechnical issues involved in healthcare in rural, underserved areas of the country. We start with observational studies and quantitative data fusion which drives mutual development of new procedures and technologies that can be prototyped, tested, integrated and further refined until they are ready to be deployed with our partners.”

“Through this strategic collaboration, we will work to bring the critical connectivity piece to the cancer puzzle,” continued Ellison. “Increasingly, broadband-enabled technologies are transforming the way cancer patients and survivors better manage, monitor, and treat their symptoms — helping them to live longer, better quality lives. But for rural Americans with limited access to broadband, many of these connected care solutions are unavailable.  Better connectivity holds the promise of bringing first class care and treatment to anyone, anywhere.”

“Research suggests that when patients report symptoms electronically to their care providers they are almost twice as likely to report improvements to health-related quality of life than those in a disconnected control group,” said Bradford Hesse, Ph.D., Chief, Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch, National Cancer Institute. “Electronically connected patients were also less likely to be admitted to the emergency room and had greater survival rates than patients in the control group. Collaborating with the FCC is a vital step for improving cancer outcomes for all Americans, regardless of where they live.”

The President’s Cancer Panel report, Improving Cancer-Related Outcomes with Connected Health, specifically urged more cross-sector collaboration among those in the healthcare, biomedical research, and technology fields as essential to the future of cancer care. Consistent with this blueprint, the multi-year, cross-sector L.A.U.N.C.H. project will focus on how broadband connectivity can be leveraged to improve symptom management for rural cancer patients, presenting a compelling case for greater deployment and adoption of broadband in rural areas.  Symptom management is one of the key priorities of the 2016 Blue Ribbon Panel, a group of scientific experts created to advise the National Cancer Advisory Board.

Additional information about the FCC-NCI memorandum and the broadband health demonstration project will be available online at https://www.fcc.gov/health/cancer.  Information about “critical need” counties at the intersection of broadband and health is available at https://www.fcc.gov/health/maps/priority-and-ruralpriority-2017.

The Connect2HealthFCC Task Force also encourages all stakeholders interested in broadband health projects for other critical need areas ― including fixed or mobile broadband providers, health technology companies, device manufacturers, and health care facilities ― to contact the Task Force via e-mail at engageC2H@fcc.gov. It would be useful for stakeholders to include information about broadband health needs and opportunities in particular critical need areas and offer concrete proposals on how they are seeking to address them via public-private partnerships or other models.

Read Next

Sean Cross

Sean Kross explains the uses of The Wizard of Oz Technique in Design | Design Chats


Sean Kross, Graduate Student at UC San Diego, explains The Wizard of Oz Technique in design and what benefits it provides for designers.

Design Chats is a video series where we sit down with design practitioners to answer questions about how they utilize human-centered design.

View our Design Chats playlist on the Design Lab YouTube Channel
Design Lab Faculty

New Design Lab Faculty Working to Shape the Future of UC San Diego

As a global pioneer in design thinking, research, and invention, The Design Lab prides itself on recruiting the brightest and most innovative minds in the design field. Today, we would like to extend a warm welcome to brand new faculty members Elizabeth Eikey, Haijun Xia, and Edward Wang!

Elizabeth Eikey
From a first-generation undergraduate student at Penn State, then an inquisitive Best Buy employee and finally, to the Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health & The Design Lab at UCSD, Dr. Elizabeth Eikey has an illustrious career. Her research work at The Design Lab focuses on the intersection between technology, mental health, and equity, primarily studying the possible applications for technology in supporting mental health and well-being.

Haijun Xia
After receiving his PhD in Computer Science from University of Toronto, Xia made the move across countries to begin his time as a researcher at UC San Diego. ‘I wanted to work at The Design Lab and UC San Diego, because of the diversity of skill here,’ says the Professor, ‘We are all approaching the many challenging research questions from different angles, which is really important to develop comprehensive solutions.

Edward Wang
When Edward Wang was an undergraduate student at Harvey Mudd, he never expected himself to become a researcher, let alone becoming a professor. It was only after a Professor offered him the chance to help design a course she was planning about biosignal processing, that he began on this path. ‘As I was designing the class over summer, I had to read a bunch of papers,’ he says, ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about how cool all of it was. Especially when it branched out into computer science and how it could be involved in biosignal processes.’

Indigenous knowledge and advocacy is now seen as vital to the fight against climate change

As nations develop strategies to combat climate change, they're beginning to turn to solutions from the indigenous communities that have been on the front lines of the efforts to protect the planet.

A 2021 report from the indigenous rights organization, the ICCA, details just how much the rest of the world depends on indigenous communities for preserving planetary health.

"In Latin America and the Caribbean, Indigenous and tribal peoples manage between 330 and 380 million hectares of forest," the ICCA report said. "Those forests store more than one-eighth of all the carbon in the world’s tropical forests and house a large portion of the world’s endangered animal and plant species. Almost half (45 per cent) of the large ‘wilderness’ areas in the Amazon Basin are in Indigenous territories and several studies have found that Indigenous peoples’ territories have lower rates of deforestation and lower risk of wildfires than state protected areas."

The UC San Diego Design Lab

This is an exciting time for the field of design. The technologies that the research communities have worked on for the past 25 years have leapt off the pages of academic journals and into the daily lives of billions. What used to be our imagination is now our reality. These have enabled an extremely wide range of innovation in multiple arenas: healthcare and medicine, business, social interaction, entertainment.

But technology only enables: a practical application requires more than the underlying technology. If we build things for people, then knowledge of both people and technology is required. If we are to make them pleasurable, then the creativity and craft skills of artists and traditionally trained industrial and graphic designers are required. If they are to be understandable, then social scientists are required, including experts in writing and exposition. If they are to thrive in the world of business, then schools of management are required. Design aspires to combine these very different vertical threads of knowledge. Design is an all encompassing field that integrates together business and engineering, the social sciences and the arts.
Design Lab #wearenotwaiting Nightscout Openaps

How DIY Designers are Impacting Healthcare

#WeAreNotWaiting is the social media movement of folks in the diabetes community who have come…

San Diego/Tijuana is finalist to become a World Design Capital

San Diego Union Tribune

The San Diego/Tijuana region is a finalist to become a World Design Capital that could mean a year-long promotion of the binational region.

Winners are chosen based on how each region effectively incorporates design across their economic, technological, social, cultural, political and environmental sectors . More than just having a fancy title, winning means a year of events to promote the region, including a street festival, a one-day celebration highlighting the winner’s designs and a design conference that should bring people from around the globe.

“This is an incredibly exciting opportunity to not only showcase our bi-national region as a longstanding design and innovation powerhouse,” she wrote, “but to also shape the narrative around what it means to be a 21st century metropolis, [says Michèle Morris, President of the Design Forward Alliance and Associate Director of UCSD Design Lab]."
Back To Top