CLEVELAND – Dr. Charles Modlin Jr. is determined to put an end to health disparities.
It’s a problem that goes much deeper than, for example, the five-year difference in life expectancy for white versus black males.
Disparities in care and treatment in the United States could end up costing as much as $337 billion over the next decade, according to a cost analysis published in 2009 by the Urban Institute, which conducts economic and social-policy research.
That money is being used to pay for hospital stays, drugs and other treatments that are a result of poorly managed chronic diseases and conditions that are not tended to until advanced stages.
“Health disparities are a real phenomenon,” says Modlin, director of the Minority Men’s Health Center at the Cleveland Clinic.
