An athlete dies from sudden cardiac arrest about every four days in the U.S. The average age of those athletes is about 18 years old – 90 percent are male, and more than half of those are African-American.

Stark statistics to be sure, which is why the Black Coaches and Administrators have teamed with physicians from around the nation and Boston Scientific staff members on the “Close the Gap” initiative.

This program kicked off in February to raise awareness about heart disease and emphasize the disparities in cardiovascular care for women, African-Americans and Latino Americans compared to treatment available for majority groups. “Close the Gap” representatives staffed various men’s and women’s college basketball games to give fans an opportunity to learn about identifying and reducing risks.

Roosevelt Gilliam, a cardiologist and former football and track student-athlete at Georgia (1975-78), said sudden cardiac arrest occurs when the heart becomes electrically unstable. Some people who experience an episode believe the heart is actually stopped, but Gilliam said most cardiac arrests involve “a disordered heartbeat.”

Since sudden cardiac arrest is the leading cause of death for young athletes, Close the Gap participants advocate screening athletes for signs of heart abnormalities.

“Three things will sort out the lion’s share of individuals who are at increased risk,” said Winston Gandy, an Atlanta-based cardiologist. “Two are cheap and the third is very inexpensive.”

The first, Gandy said, is simply asking student-athletes about their medical history. Has anyone in your family died suddenly at an early age? Have you experienced dizziness, chest pains or passing-out spells?

The next step is to perform electrocardiograms on student-athletes, which trace the heartbeat’s electrical waves. Combining the medical history with electrocardiogram results help “build a case,” Gandy said. “There are some congenital things that predispose people to cardiac arrest, and these things can be picked up by an EKG as well,” he added.

Gandy said the cost for electrocardiograms could be as little as $5 per athlete.

Then, if a student-athlete shows sign of a more serious heart problem, an echocardiogram would be needed. This test is a comprehensive ultrasound of the heart. Typically, it is performed in a hospital or a doctor’s office and can cost anywhere from $700 to $900.

Gandy works with an organization called Athlete’s Heartbeat that has screened student-athletes for heart abnormalities at the University of Georgia for the last 10 years.

The screening echocardiogram they administer costs $50-$75 per student-athlete. If an abnormality is found, a more comprehensive test is ordered.

“We tested around 225 athletes last year at Georgia,” Gandy said. “Out of that 225 we may have identified three or four that need a full-blown echocardiogram.”

In the decade of doing the heart screenings at Georgia, Gandy has disqualified only one athlete from competing.

Technological advances such as an implantable cardioverter defibrillator can be placed in a student-athlete. The ICD is implanted under the patient’s collarbone, and wires run down to the heart chamber to monitor the rhythm of the heart.

If an individual’s heart suffers an electrical problem, the device would shock the organ back into rhythm.

It can also allow a person to continue his/her athletics career, but more importantly it can save someone’s life.

“These devices used to be the size of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” Gandy said. “Now, they are the size of a half dollar.”

Gilliam, a former chief of electrophysiology at Duke now based in Jonesboro, Arkansas, said the ICD is the type of technology that could help prevent deaths like those of former Loyola Marymount standout Hank Geathers or former Boston Celtic Reggie Lewis.

“Both of these young men needed defibrillators, and they probably would be here today with their families if they had one,” Gilliam said. “What we’re trying to do is show we have a treatment that works. If we identify people with this problem – which we can do – we have done many studies that show if they have a defibrillator they have a better chance of living.”

He added that less than 20 percent of those people who have a problem get a device implanted.

“Unfortunately, the first symptom for a person might be that they die suddenly,” Gilliam said. “Ninety percent don’t survive to get to the hospital. If you happen to be a woman or ethnic minority, your chances of survival are less than the standard population. The gap we’re talking about is the treatment the majority of the population receives compared to women and ethnic minorities. We know these groups of people need the therapy.”

Stakeholders in the Close the Gap initiative were at the Rutgers women’s game against Connecticut and men’s games between Clark and Morehouse, Miami (Florida) and Duke, North Carolina State and Florida State, and Ohio State and Minnesota.

“I was pleasantly surprised by the level of interest on the part of students, faculty and the athletes,” said Gandy, who attended the Clark-Morehouse game. “We recognize a level of uncertainty among a lot of medical practitioners – not because they aren’t smart but because they don’t have the experience or comfort level to make decisions with these sorts of things. What we are trying to do is come up with a protocol or flow chart where the doctors have a frame of reference to deal with these issues.”

Patients can also learn how to approach a visit to a physician, and give full details of any episodes they’ve experienced. That way, everyone can better diagnose a heart problem.

If you say someone had a heart attack, then someone might think you could not have prevented that anyway,” Gilliam said. “We need to make sure our vocabulary is correct. If we say someone died of hypertrophic cardiopothy, they had a problem with their heart structure that could have been identified.”