UNNATURAL CAUSES is inequality making us sick? HEALTH EQUITY research topics and resources to learn more
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Full Text with Chapter Divisions for Each Episode

The opening 56-minute episode presents the series' overarching themes. Each of the supporting 25-minute episodes, set in a different ethnic/racial community, provides a deeper exploration of the ways in which social conditions affect population health and how some communities are extending their lives by improving them.

DVD Chapter Descriptions (PDF)       DVD Chapter Times Chart (PDF)

In Sickness and In Wealth

EPISODE ONE, 56 MINS (SERIES OPENER)

What connections exist between healthy bodies, healthy bank accounts and skin color? Follow four individuals from different walks of life to see how their position in society - shaped by social policies and public priorities - affects their health.

When the Bough Breaks

EPISODE TWO, 29 MINS

African American infant mortality rates remain twice as high as for white Americans. Black mothers with graduate degrees face the same risk of having low birth-weight babies as 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?

Becoming American

EPISODE THREE, 29 MINS

Recent Mexican immigrants tend to be healthier than the average American. But the longer they're here, the worse their relative health becomes. What causes immigrants to lose their health advantage? What can we all learn about improved wellbeing from new immigrant communities?

Bad Sugar

EPISODE FOUR, 29 MINS

The O'odham Indians, living on reservations in southern Arizona, have perhaps the highest rate of Type 2 diabetes in the world. Some researchers see this as a bodily response to decades of poverty, oppression and loss. A new approach shows how self-determination and collective hope for the future is fundamental to regaining health.

Place Matters

EPISODE FIVE, 29 MINS

Increasingly, recent Southeast Asian immigrants, along with Latinos, are moving into neglected urban neighborhoods, and their health is being eroded as a result. What policies and investment decisions create living environments that harm-or enhance-the health of residents? What actions can make a difference?

Collateral Damage

EPISODE SIX, 29 MINS

In the Marshall Islands, local populations have been displaced from a traditional way of life by globalization and the American military presence. Now they must 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.

Not Just a Paycheck

EPISODE SEVEN, 30 MINS

Residents of western Michigan struggle against depression, domestic violence and higher rates of heart disease and diabetes 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 and their communities.