What is the role of ICTs in addressing health outcomes and limitations from socio-economic status?
ABSTRACT: While access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been touted as a key determinant for human development, few studies have investigated how ICT implementations assist people with low socioeconomic status (SES) and the impacts this might have on health outcomes. This paper investigates the relation between having access to ICTs, health outcomes, and SES. The association between socioeconomic affluence and health is even recognized by policymakers, which suggests that there is an association between SES status and health. This paper addresses the gap in the literature by investigating the research questions: 1) what is the relation between access to ICTs and fair or poor health? 2) Is there a relation between access to ICTs and socio-economic status? The findings illustrate that having less access to ICTs is related to individuals more frequently reporting fair or poor health and having less access to ICTs relates to low SES communities that are in poverty, have lower education rates, have a high number of uninsured people, have people who experience more physical distress, and live in rural areas. A key contribution is that access to ICTs does have a correlation to health and that access to ICTs have a relation to low SES. This means that ICTs can help people access resources to assist with poverty, insurance, education, physical distress, and people who live in rural populations can take advantage of ICTs to help them lead the lives they choose to live.
Keywords: mHealth, Development as freedom, socioeconomic determinants of health, socio-economic status, freedom
