UNNATURAL CAUSES...is inequality making us sick?: A four-hour documentary series exploring America's racial and socioeconomic inequities in health

UNNATURAL CAUSES sounds the alarm about the extent of our alarming socio-economic and racial inequities in health — and searches for their root causes. But those causes are not what we might expect. While we pour more and more money into drugs, dietary supplements and new medical technologies, UNNATURAL CAUSES crisscrosses the country investigating the findings that are shaking up conventional understanding of what really makes us healthy — or sick.

This is a story that implicates us all. We’re spending $2 trillion a year and rising on health care, more than twice per person than the average industrialized nation. Yet American life expectancy ranks 29th in the world, behind Costa Rica. Infant mortality? Cypress, Slovenia and Malta do better. One third of Americans are obese. Chronic illness now costs American businesses more than $1 trillion a year in lost productivity.

It turns out there’s much more to our health than bad habits, health care or unlucky genes. The social conditions in which we are born, live and work profoundly affect our well-being and longevity.

The four-hour series, broadcast by PBS, was conceived as part of an ambitious communications and public engagement campaign conducted with leading public health, policy and community-based organizations. The campaign aims to use the series and companion materials to help reframe the national debate over health and what we can — and should — do to tackle our health inequities.

For more information log on to: http://www.unnaturalcauses.org/