Crossing the Gap
Healing Epidemics and Inequalities in a Divided City

Two girls are born in the same Chicago hospital. Their neighborhoods-just seven train stops apart-will shape their futures and help determine how long they live. This is the death gap:lives lost too soon. Crossing the Gap asks how a city with world class hospitals can tolerate an epidemic of premature death- and tells the story of the people fighting to end it. In his landmark book, The Death Gap, physician and health equity leader David Ansell exposed how structural racism and poverty shorten lives. He moves beyond diagnosis in Crossing the Gap to explore what happens when a major medical center joins forces with pastors, community organizers, residents and young leaders on Chicago's West Side, to redefine what a hospital owes its neighbors.