Thomas Jefferson University Takes on Telehealth, mHealth Barriers

Thomas Jefferson University has launched the Jefferson Center for Connected Care, a new effort by one of the East Coast’s leading connected health organizations to take on the barriers to telehealth and mHealth access.

“The pandemic accelerated the trend to virtual care at home, and it showed us how many people are at risk of being left behind as the digital gap grows,” Kristin Rising, MD, MSHP, faculty member in the Philadelphia-based school’s Department of Emergency Medicine in the Sidney Kimmel Medical College and in the College of Nursing and the center’s leader, said in a press release. “We want to conduct the research and provide the training needed to ensure equitable virtual access as medicine uses digital tools to increasingly care for people at home.”

The center’s goals include addressing the so-called digital divide, and Rising is well-versed in taking on that task. Last year, with the help of a federal grant, she launched a Digital Onboarding Taskforce (DOT) aimed at identifying and helping patients learn how to use new technology to access care.

“You can’t just hand someone a device and expect they’re going to be on a telehealth visit the next day,” she told mHealthIntelligence in a March 2021 interview. “Many people aren’t comfortable using telehealth. You have to find out why … and help them.”

The new center will house the Jefferson Telehealth Leadership Fellowship, directed by Anna Marie Chang, MD, MSCE, and Judd Hollander, MD, who’ve been responsible for, among other things, the launch of the JeffConnect virtual care program. It will also support a new T32 postdoctoral fellowship, funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and focusing on behavioral health, addiction, primary care and telehealth.

In addition, the center will use a $250,000 grant from the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to host a conference next spring focused on reducing telehealth disparities.

“Our goal is to partner with patients to identify best practices, understand knowledge gaps, prioritize research questions, and set a national patient-centered research agenda to reduce disparities in telehealth uptake,” Rising said of the conference.

The center is one of many programs and projects aimed at tackling the social determinants of health, non-clinical factors that impede access to care for underserved communities. These might include social and cultural issues, economic hardship or barriers caused by geography. Telehealth and mHealth have often been held up as examples of how to take on those barriers, but they can cause challenges of their own.

Jefferson officials note that while the pandemic has led to a surge in telehealth adoption and access, it has also exposed the digital divide and the health disparities experienced by some people – including an estimated 19 million, or 6 percent of the population, that lack broadband access.

“The future of healthcare depends on helping people thrive wherever they are, what I call healthcare at any address,” Stephen Klasko, MD, MBA, president of Thomas Jefferson University and CEO of Jefferson Health, said in the press release. “We’ve created this center to ensure that as connected care expands, all people and all communities benefit.”