Sunday School and Child Care Provided
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Here in the United States, 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.
UNNATURAL CAUSES was produced 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.
Sessions are Wednesday nights from 6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
September 10, Episode One: In Sickness and In Wealth – 56 mins
The opening episode lays out the big picture: who gets sick and why? Set in Louisville, Kentucky, it shows how health and longevity are correlated with class status, how racism imposes an additional risk burden, and how solutions lie in making inequality an urgent public policy matter.
September 17, Episode Two: When the Bough Breaks – 29 mins
African American infant mortality rates remain twice as high as for white Americans. African American mothers with graduate degrees deliver more low birth-weight babies than white women who haven’t finished high school. How might the chronic stress of racism over the life-course become embedded in our bodies and increase risks?
September 24, Episode Three: Becoming American – 29 mins
Recent Mexican immigrants, though often poorer, tend to be healthier than the average American. But the longer they’re here, the worse their relative health becomes. How do social inclusion, community ties and economic mobility play a role in maintaining health?
October 1, Episode Four: Bad Sugar – 29 mins
O’odham Indians living on reservations in southern Arizona, have perhaps the highest rates of Type 2 diabetes in the world. Increasingly, researchers are reconceptualizing chronic diseases like diabetes as a bodily response to poverty, oppression and futurelessness. A new approach suggests that regaining control over a collective future is vital to reversing this epidemic.
October 8, Episode Five: Place Matters – 29 mins
Why are your zip code and street address such a good predictor of population health? What policies and investment decisions create radically different living environments - some that are harmful and others that are protective of health? What actions can make a difference, particularly in low-income communities?
October 15, Episode Six: Collateral Damage – 29 mins
In the Marshall Islands, local populations have been displaced from a traditional way of life by the American military presence. Now that both their social and immune systems have been eroded, they contend with the worst of the “developing” and industrialized worlds: infectious diseases such as tuberculosis due to crowded living conditions and extreme poverty and chronic disease stemming from the stress of dislocation and loss.
October 22, Episode Seven: Not Just a Paycheck – 30 mins
How do unemployment and job insecurity affect health? Residents of western Michigan struggle against depression, domestic violence, and heart disease after the largest refrigerator factory in the country shuts down. Ironically, the plant is owned by a company in Sweden, where mass layoffs – far from devastating lives – are relatively benign, because of government policies that protect workers.
Do you know about our ministry to young children? See the Chapel with Small Children.
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