Details

Subject(s)

• Social medicine—United States [Browse]
• Equality—Health aspects—United States [Browse]
• Poverty—Health aspects—United States [Browse]
• Racism—Health aspects—United States [Browse]
• Health—Social aspects—United States [Browse]
• Health and race—United States [Browse]
• Discrimination in medical care—United States [Browse]
• Medical policy—United States [Browse]

Summary note

"We hear plenty about the widening income gap between the rich and the poor in America and about the expanding distance dividing the haves and the have-nots. But when detailing the many things that the poor have not, we often overlook the most critical their health. The poor die sooner. Blacks die sooner. And poor urban blacks die sooner than almost all other Americans. In nearly four decades as a doctor at hospitals serving some of the poorest communities in Chicago, David Ansell has witnessed the lives behind these devastating statistics firsthand. In 'The Death Gap', he gives a grim survey of these realities, drawn from observations and stories of his patients. While the contrasts and disparities in Chicago's communities are particularly stark, the death gap is truly a nationwide epidemic as Ansell shows, there is a thirty-five-year difference in life expectancy between the healthiest and wealthiest and the poorest and sickest American neighborhoods. It doesn't need to be this way; such divisions are not inevitable. Ansell calls out the social and cultural arguments that have been raised as ways of explaining or excusing these gaps, and he lays bare the structural violence the racism, economic exploitation, and discrimination that is really to blame. Inequality is a disease, Ansell argues, and we need to treat and eradicate it as we would any major illness. To do so, he outlines a vision that will provide the foundation for a healthier nation - for all."--Jacket flap.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-222) and index.

Contents

• Preface: one street, two worlds
• American roulette. American roulette
• Structural violence and the death gap
• Location, location, location
• Perception is reality
• The three Bs: beliefs, behavior, biology
• Trapped by inequity. Fire and rain: life and death in natural disasters
• Mass incarceration, premature death, and community health
• Immigration status and health inequality: the case of transplant
• Health care inequality. The US health care system: separate and unequal
• The poison pill: health insurance in America
• The cure. Community efficacy and the death gap.
• Community activism against structural violence
• Observe, judge, act.

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ISBN

• 9780226428154 ((cloth ; : alk. paper))
• 022642815X ((cloth ; : alk. paper))

LCCN

2016055405

OCLC

958779966

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