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About the Film:

A Message from the Executive Producer, Larry Adleman
(http://www.unnaturalcauses.org/about_the_series.php)

“It often appears that we Americans are obsessed with health. Media outlets trumpet the latest gene and drug discoveries, dietary supplements line shelf after shelf in the supermarket and a multi-billion dollar industry of magazines, videos and spas sells healthy "lifestyles." We spend more than twice what the average rich country spends per person on medical care. Yet we have among the worst disease outcomes of any industrialized nation - and the greatest health inequities. It's not just the poor who are sick. Even the middle classes die, on average, almost three years sooner than the rich.

At every step down the socio-economic ladder, African Americans, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders often fare worse than their white counterparts. Interestingly, that’s not the case for most new groups of immigrants of color.  Recent Latino immigrants, for example, though typically poorer than the average American, have better health.  But the longer they live here, the more their health advantage erodes. Our international health status has fallen radically in the last few decades. In 1980, we ranked 14th in life expectancy; by 2007, we had fallen to 29th. Our infant mortality rate lags behind 30 other countries. And illness now costs American business more than $1 trillion a year in lost productivity.

Healthy behaviors, molecular research, and of course, universal health care are all important. But evidence suggests they miss the most vital factor of all: how the social circumstances in which we are born, live and work can get under our skin and disrupt our biology as surely as germs and viruses.

We produced UNNATURAL CAUSES to draw attention to the root causes of health and illness and to help reframe the debate about health in America. Economic and racial inequality are not abstract concepts but hospitalize and kill even more people than cigarettes. The wages and benefits we're paid, the neighborhoods we live in, the schools we attend, our access to resources and even our tax policies are health issues every bit as critical as diet, smoking and exercise.

The unequal distribution of these social conditions - and their health consequences - are not natural or inevitable. They are the result of choices that we as a community, as states, and as a nation have made, and can make differently. Other nations already have, and they live longer, healthier lives as a result.”

More About the Film

(Adapted from the Unnatural Causes website, www.unnaturalcauses.org)

The Unnatural Causes series and accompanying impact campaign aim to enlarge our public discourse about health through the following objectives:

(1) Increase public awareness of our alarming socioeconomic and racial/ethnic inequities in health and their human and financial costs;

(2) Promote understanding of the various ways in which class, racism and disempowerment can get under the skin and influence health outcomes;

(3) Illustrate how well-being is not just a matter of making good choices and having access to quality care; our outcomes are inextricably linked - for better and worse - to the social conditions that surround and shape our lives;

(4) Demonstrate that health inequities affect all of us. On average, the bottom 80% of us have worse health than the rich and powerful. We all bear the financial burden for disease and disability: increased medical costs, lost economic activity, lowered business productivity;

(5) Move health discussions "upstream" - beyond the individual-focused "repair shop" model of disease and illness to a preventive approach that looks to change the underlying conditions that shape whole group outcomes;

(6) Link health discussions to social and economic policies - e.g., housing, racism, education, jobs and wages, community development, social supports and tax policy. Evaluate social and economic policies by their health impact, and press for more health-promoting measures;

(7) Communicate hopeful solutions that draw public and policy maker attention to innovative and community-based initiatives for health equity.

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