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       Unnatural Causes, Does Inequality Make Us Sick? a seven-part series for PBS broadcast and DVD release, will, for the first time on television, sound the alarm about our glaring socio-economic and racial disparities in health--and seek out root causes. But those causes are not what we might expect.  While we pour more and more money into drugs, dietary supplements and new medical technologies, it turns out there is much more to our health than bad habits, health care or unlucky genes. The social conditions in which we are born, live and work  profoundly affect our well-being and longevity. 

 

       Conceived as part of an ambitious public education campaign conducted in partnership with leading public health, policy, and community-based organizations, Unnatural Causes will help foster a new and hopeful approach to the public's health. As Harvard epidemiologist David Williams points out, investing in our schools, improving housing, integrating neighborhoods, better jobs and wages, giving people more control over their work, these are as much health strategies as smoking diet and exercise. And these are the stories Unnatural Causes will tell.

         

       The series is a medical detective story out to solve the mystery of what’s stalking and killing us before our time, especially those of us who are less well off and darker skinned. The investigators — epidemiologists, neuro-biologists, doctors and health workers — keep peeling back the onion, broadening our inquiry beyond immediate, physical causes of death to the deeper, underlying causes that lurk in our neighborhoods, our jobs and even back in history.  The perpetrators, of course, aren’t individuals but rather social and institutional forces.  And these are not impulsive crimes of passion.  These are slow deaths—the result of a lifetime of grinding wear and tear, thwarted ambition, segregation and neglect.
 
      But this is also a story of hope and possibility, of communities organizing to gain control over their destinies—and their health.  The good news is that if our bad health results in part from policy decisions that we as a society have made, then we can make other decisions. As some already have.
 
      The centerpiece of the series is an hour-long opening episode that sets up the overarching themes of the series: health and longevity are correlated with socioeconomic status, people of color face an additional burden and solutions lie not in more pills or better genes, but in better social policies. The main hour is supported by six additional half-hour stories set in different racial and ethnic communities. Each deepens our understanding of the root causes of disease, illuminates pathways by which social conditions affect physiology, and brings viewers face to face with innovative initiatives for health equity.

 

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Unnatural CauseS:

Does Inequality Make Us Sick?

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