Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?

Saturdays, March 29-April 19 at 4 p.m.

Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?, airing Saturdays, March 29-April 19 at 4 p.m on WXXI-TV 21 (cable 11), is a four-hour series that, for the first time on television, sounds the alarm about glaring socio-economic and racial inequities in health and searches for their causes.

The U.S. already spends twice per person on health care than any other industrialized nation. Yet our life expectancy ranks 30th; Costa Ricans live longer. Infant mortality? We’re tied with Hungary, Poland and Slovakia for next to last among industrialized nations. Illnesses cost American business more than a trillion dollars a year in lost productivity.

Further, research has revealed a gradient to health. At each step down the socio-economic ladder — from the rich to the middle class to the poor — people tend to be sicker and die sooner. It’s no surprise that poor Americans die eight years before the rich on average, but middle-class Americans die almost three years sooner than the rich.

Unnatural Causes looks at what’s making us sick in the first place, investigating startling new findings that suggest there is much more to poor health than bad habits, inadequate health care or unlucky genes. The series circles in on a slow killer in plain view: the social circumstances in which we are born, live and work that can affect our risk for disease as surely as germs and viruses.

In Sickness and in Wealth airs Saturday, March 29 at 4 p.m.
This is a story about health, but it’s not about doctors or drugs. Set mostly in Louisville, Kentucky, it’s a detective story out to solve the mystery of what’s stalking and killing so many Americans before their time. The program uncovers the connections between healthy bodies and healthy bank accounts — and why residents of so many other nations, including many poorer countries, live longer and healthier lives. Solutions, evidence suggests, may lie not in more pills but in more equality.

When the Bough Breaks/Becoming American airs Saturday, April 5 at 4 p.m.
When the Bough Breaks -- African-American infant mortality rates remain twice as high as white Americans. In fact, African-American mothers with graduate degrees face a greater risk of having pre-term, low birth-weight babies than white mothers who haven’t finished high school. Investigators are circling in on how the chronic stress of racism throughout a life can become a risk factor embedded in the body.

Becoming American -- Recent Mexican immigrants, on the other hand, though poorer, tend to be healthier than the average American. But the longer they’re here, the worse their relative health becomes. This is known as the “Hispanic Paradox.” Is there something about life in America that is harming their health? Conversely, what is protective about new immigrant communities that we can learn from?

Bad Sugar/Place Matters airs Saturday, April 12 at 4 p.m.
Bad Sugar -- Bad Sugar travels to the O’odham Indian reservations of southern Arizona where residents are marked not just by poverty but with the dubious distinction of perhaps the highest rates of Type 2 diabetes in the world. While public attention has been focused on risky behaviors and genes, evidence increasingly points to a link between chronic disease and “futurelessness.” The program also looks at a new approach to health — one rooted in communities regaining control over their destiny.

Place Matters -- In many poor inner cities like Richmond, California, recent Southeast Asian immigrants and Latinos are moving into what have been neglected black urban neighborhoods — and now their health is being eroded, too. What policies and investment decisions create neighborhood environments that harm — or benefit — the health of residents? And what actions can make a difference?

Collateral Damage/Not Just a Paycheck airs Saturday, April 19 at 4 p.m.
Collateral Damage -- Mainlanders view the Pacific Islands as a paradise. But diabetes, cardiovascular and kidney diseases and tuberculosis are taking a toll on the Pacific Islander population. In the Marshall Islands and in the unlikely spot of Springdale, Arkansas, this program shows how globalization is affecting health — often in unanticipated ways.

Not Just a Paycheck -- How does job insecurity and unemployment affect health? In rural western Michigan, residents struggle against depression, domestic violence, heart disease and diabetes when the largest refrigerator factory in the country shuts down. Ironically, the plant is owned by a Swedish company. In Sweden, shutdowns are relatively benign events and, for some people, even create opportunities thanks to Swedish government policies.

For more information, visit www.unnaturalcauses.org.

Pictured: Mom with premature baby, who now weighs two pounds. African American moms are at twice the risk of delivering pre-term, low-weight babies as white moms. But African immigrants aren’t. From When the Bough Breaks (Hour Two)
Photo Credit: Still from Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? copyright California Newsreel. All rights reserved.