WatchTEDxChicago
How Inequality Kills (TEDx)
David Ansell reveals how racism, economic inequality, and place shape who gets the chance to live a long, healthy life.
COVERAGE · CONVERSATIONS · IDEAS
The work
in public.
Media, interviews, and conversations about The Death Gap, its causes, and what it takes to close it.
FEATURED VIDEO
Chicago confronts
The Death Gap.
ListenNPR · Fresh Air
‘Life, Death and Politics’: Treating Chicago’s uninsured
A conversation about Cook County Hospital, unequal access, and the experiences that shaped a lifelong advocate for health reform.
ReadThe New York Times
County: Life, Death and Politics at Chicago’s Public Hospital
A critical look at Ansell’s account of medicine, politics, and the uninsured inside one of America’s storied public hospitals.
ReadNew England Journal of Medicine
Structural racism: A 60-year-old Black woman with breast cancer
A patient’s route through unequal cancer care makes structural racism visible in clinical practice.
ReadNew England Journal of Medicine
Transfers to a public hospital: A prospective study of 467 patients
Landmark evidence showing that most transfers to a public hospital occurred because patients lacked adequate insurance.
ReadNew England Journal of Medicine
Health equity and the work ahead
A perspective on the structural forces shaping unequal outcomes and the obligations of health institutions.
ReadNew England Journal of Medicine
The Anchor Strategy: A place-based business approach for health equity
How health systems can use hiring, purchasing, investing, and community partnerships to advance health equity.
WatchNew England Journal of Medicine
A conversation with David Ansell
A video conversation about medicine, structural inequality, and the civic role of health systems.
ReadNature
Inequality: Live poor, die young
A review of The Death Gap and its case for social inequality as a cause of disease and shortened lives.
ReadJAMA
Patient dumping: Status, implications, and policy recommendations
Foundational research documenting hospitals’ denial or transfer of care for economic reasons, and the policy response it demanded.
ReadSTAT
Wealth, not health: Closing Chicago’s alarming ‘death gap’
Why changing life expectancy outside hospital walls required jobs, investment, trust, and a new civic role for medicine.
ReadCBS News
Why a major life expectancy gap has existed on Chicago’s West Side for decades
A five-mile train ride reveals a 20-year divide, and the neighborhood investment designed to close it.
ReadNovartis · Live Magazine
Night out: Guitar Mike’s return to the stage
How community-based heart care, remote monitoring, and music helped a West Side artist reclaim the life he loves.
ReadNovartis · Live Magazine
Seeing potential on Chicago’s West Side
Ayesha Jaco and West Side United connect local hiring, investment, health access, and community leadership to a longer, healthier future.
ReadAAMC
Author David Ansell exposes inequality’s deadly influence
The physician and author traces how structural inequality enters the clinic, and shortens lives.
ReadRush
Rush University System for Health invests millions in health equity
A health system moves resources beyond its walls to address the conditions that determine who lives and who dies.
ReadBuffalo Rising
Diversity and equity in an age of denial: Actions speak louder than words
A public conversation about aligning medicine, scholarship, and institutional action with the needs of the poor.
WatchWTTW
Health segregation in Chicago: Envisioning a future of health
A Firsthand conversation about the systems separating Chicago neighborhoods, and the future communities deserve.
ReadWTTW News
West Side United receives $6.9M to respond to pandemic
How West Side United and Live Healthy Chicago mobilized community investment, testing, food, masks, and direct assistance during COVID-19.
ListenSinai Chicago
Bridging the gap: Health equity and community engagement
A conversation on moving care into community and building the relationships change requires.
ReadNEJM Catalyst
Health equity as a system strategy: The Rush University Medical Center framework
A model for making health equity a central health-system strategy rather than a peripheral program.
ReadCrain’s Chicago Business
We can only build COVID immunity by building trust
Why public health depends on credibility, relationships, and institutions worthy of community trust.
ListenWHYY · The Pulse
How segregation leads to health disparities
A journey through Chicago neighborhoods revealing how segregation, disinvestment, and place shape who gets to live a healthy life.
ReadInternational Socialist Review
The real story of Cook County Hospital
A review of County and the fight by patients and health workers for dignity inside an unequal health system.
WatchPenn LDI
Research seminar with David Ansell, MD, MPH
A research conversation on health inequality, urban medicine, and the institutional work required to close death gaps.
ReadPubMed
Patient dumping and access to care
An indexed record from Ansell’s early research into unequal hospital access and economically motivated patient transfers.
ReadUPI
Doctors call for crackdown on patient dumping
Contemporary coverage of physicians pushing for enforcement against hospitals that denied or transferred patients unable to pay.
ListenThe Health Disparities Podcast
The Death Gap: Social and structural vectors of disease
David Ansell discusses the forces shaping disease that medical school did not teach, and how providers can unite quality, safety, and equity.
ReadUSC Center for Health Journalism
How health inequity maps out across America
A national view of how access, vulnerability, disinvestment, and financial incentives shape health and lifespan.
ListenWGN Radio
Four more stops on the Blue Line, and life expectancy plummets
David Ansell explains how a short train ride can reveal a profound divide in who gets the chance to live a long life.
ReadEgon Zehnder
Health equity insights: Interview with David Ansell
A leadership conversation about moving from clarity to courage in the institutional pursuit of health equity.
ListenIllinois Department of Public Health
From awareness to action: Tackling chronic disease with health equity in mind
A public-health conversation about confronting chronic disease through an equity lens.
ReadPubMed
Health equity in practice
Peer-reviewed scholarship connecting structural conditions, institutional practice, and unequal health outcomes.
ListenSUNY Upstate
Upstate alum explains how equity plays out in health care
An Informed Patient conversation about how inequality becomes visible in clinical care and community outcomes.
ReadPhysicians for a National Health Program
David Ansell talks about health care inequities
A discussion of The Death Gap, unequal access, and the policies needed to make health care more just.
ReadWestern Michigan University
Physician to discuss how inequities impact health care
A public talk connecting racism and income inequality to unequal life chances and structural violence.
ListenMarketScale
Invest in health equity, or healthcare will fail
Why hospitals must invest beyond clinical care if they intend to improve health rather than simply treat illness.
WatchRCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences
Dr David Ansell addresses health inequality at latest RCSI MyHealth Public Lecture
An international public lecture on two-tier health systems, structural inequity, and public action.
ReadAmerican Medical Association
Health systems: To boost vital conditions, follow Rush’s playbook
How a health system can use investment, employment, and civic partnership to improve community conditions.
ReadC3EN
Sankofa Wellness Village wins the Chicago Prize
A major community-led investment in West Garfield Park’s health, wealth, and built environment.
ReadChicago Sun-Times
West Side group wins $10 million to build a walkable village
The Sankofa Wellness Village plan connects grocery stores, arts, health care, and neighborhood ownership in West Garfield Park.
ReadCrain’s Chicago Business
Pritzker Traubert Foundation names its 2023 Chicago Prize winner
A $10 million award backs the community-led Sankofa Wellness Village and its plan to improve health and opportunity on Chicago’s West Side.
WatchInstitute of Medicine of Chicago
Sankofa Wellness Village wins $10M Chicago Prize
Community and health leaders discuss a walkable village built to close West Garfield Park’s life-expectancy gap.
ReadChicago Defender
Westside community wins the Chicago Prize
How a community-led coalition secured catalytic investment for Sankofa Wellness Village.
ReadBlock Club Chicago
Sankofa Wellness Village is a chance to change shorter lives
West Siders envision a community-led village designed to improve health, opportunity, and life expectancy.
ReadRush
Sankofa Village Wellness Center opens
A new neighborhood anchor brings wellness, resources, and community power together in West Garfield Park.
ReadWednesday Journal
West Side and suburban organizations tackle the life-expectancy gap
Cross-community organizations unite around the conditions that shape health and longevity.
ReadChicago Sun-Times
We’re chipping away at Chicago’s life-expectancy gap
David Ansell and Robyn Golden argue that progress requires confronting racism and investing beyond hospital walls.
ListenHealthcare Anchor Network
Part of the solution: Economic and health wellbeing
A conversation about anchor institutions, neighborhood wealth, and health systems as part of a larger civic solution.
ReadYahoo / Chicago Tribune
Sankofa Wellness Village looks to the past to envision a better future
The vision for a healthier West Garfield Park draws on community memory, ownership, and local leadership.
ReadCrain’s Chicago Business
More than a trauma center is needed to bridge Chicago’s life-expectancy gap
Why medical capacity alone cannot close a divide created by neighborhood conditions and structural inequality.
ReadChicago Tribune
Sankofa Wellness Village looks to the past to envision a better future
A community-led plan for West Garfield Park links wellness to culture, development, and shared prosperity.
ListenWBEZ / USC Center for Health Journalism
There’s a 20-year life-expectancy gap in Chicago. Many deaths are preventable.
Residents and leaders trace America’s largest big-city death gap, and the community work underway to close it.
WatchChicago Humanities
The Death Gap: Social inequity and health
A public conversation about how race, place, and class determine health and shorten lives.
ReadTimes Higher Education
The Death Gap: How Inequality Kills
A review of Ansell’s case that social inequality is not adjacent to health, it is a cause of illness and early death.
WatchConversation
David Ansell on health equity and the work beyond hospital walls
Watch a conversation from David Ansell’s ongoing public work.
WatchConversation
Understanding the death gap
A discussion of unequal life expectancy and the structures that produce it.
WatchConversation
Medicine, inequality, and public action
David Ansell connects clinical experience to the civic responsibility of health institutions.
WatchConversation
Building health equity with communities
A conversation about partnership, accountability, and lasting neighborhood change.
WatchConversation
The fight to close urban death gaps
Why the defining health crisis of American cities demands action beyond traditional care.
WatchConversation
A physician’s case for structural change
David Ansell on what decades inside Chicago hospitals revealed about inequality.
WatchConversation
From documenting disparity to changing systems
A conversation about turning evidence into institutional and community action.
WatchConversation
Health equity as a democratic promise
Why equal opportunity to live a healthy life is inseparable from the health of democracy.
WatchFacebook
A conversation with David Ansell
Watch a short exchange on health equity and neighborhood life expectancy.
WatchFacebook
Closing the gap in communities
A brief look at the people and ideas moving the work forward.
WatchLeadership conversation
Beyond DEI: A strategic approach to systemic racism in health care
David Ansell on turning equity from a statement of values into an operating strategy.
WatchPublic conversation
David Ansell on inequality, medicine, and action
A public conversation about the systems that produce unequal health, and the work required to change them.