The Death Gap: How Inequality Kills

Author Bio: David A. Ansell MD, MPH

David A. Ansell, MD, MPH, is a Chicago-based physician and health activist. He has been an internal medicine physician since training at Cook County Hospital in the late 1970s where he spent seventeen years holding a number of positions including chief of general medicine / primary care. After leaving County, he spent ten years as chair of the Department of Internal Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital located in one of the poorest communities in Chicago. Now chief medical officer at Rush University Medical Center, he also sees patients and teaches. Since coming to Chicago to train at Cook County Hospital, he has dedicated his career to fighting health inequity by building programs to address and eliminate these disparities. His work with others has led to the end of “patient dumping” in the United States, one of the first cancer screening programs in America aimed at addressing the Black:White breast cancer mortality disparity, the creation of the most prominent health disparity research and intervention center in Chicago, and the creation of the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Taskforce, a not-for-profit dedicated to the elimination of breast cancer mortality disparity. In his spare time he reads, gardens, and exercises. He volunteers as a doctor at a Chicago free clinic and has participated in ongoing medical missions to the Dominican Republic and Haiti. He is married to a doctor and has two children.