Beyond Bad Habits
Film Links Socioeconomic Factors to Poor Health
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In researching their new documentary, filmmakers Llewellyn Smith and Christine Herbes-Sommers focused on the choices and conditions that can mean the difference between good health and illness.
Their result -- "Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?" -- airs in four parts over the next four weeks. The series explores how such factors as geography, race, social situations and stress can affect well-being, with the first episode focusing on the connection between health and income.
Herbes-Sommers said the series is meant to convey that "what is written into our bodies is a lifetime of experiences and social conditions. It's not about genes." She and Smith interviewed doctors and other health professionals in addition to other experts for the program.
The title, Smith said, stems from the fact that "the huge things that have a big impact on our health have to do with the way we organize our society."
Among topics explored by the series: the health status of Latinos who migrate to the United States; how chronic stress stemming from racial discrimination can affect African American families; how job insecurity has taken a toll on residents of western Michigan; and the unusually high presence of Type 2 diabetes among two Native American communities in Arizona, where a prolonged battle over water rights has left the once-prosperous area poverty-stricken.
A segment on infant mortality contrasts how college-educated black women are more likely to give birth prematurely than white women who do not finish high school. Another looks at the life expectancy age gaps between wealthy and working-class neighborhoods in Louisville.
Herbes-Sommers said one of the film's themes is that the resources to sustain or improve health aren't accessible to everyone.
"It's easy to say, 'That person doesn't have to eat that way,' or 'They should exercise more,'" she said. "But if you live in a dangerous neighborhood, or in the suburbs where there are no sidewalks, your choices are constrained."
-- Kathy Blumenstock
UNNATURAL CAUSES
On PBS 22: Thursdays at 11 p.m.
On PBS 26: Fridays at 10:30 p.m.
