FACT: The average U.S. life expectancy, at 78.2 years, remains far below that of other developed nations.
FACT: Even after adjusting for behaviors and access to health care, middle-class Americans live an average of three fewer years than their upper-class counterparts.
FACT: African Americans, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders have consistently poorer health outcomes than their white counterparts.
FACT: Immigrant health tends to erode just as assimilation begins.
FACT: African American mothers with graduate degrees deliver more low birth weight babies than white women who haven’t finished high school.
How is it that the United States can spend more 
money on health care than any other industrialized nation and still report such poor health outcomes? Is inequality, as the producers of Unnatural Causes note, really “making us sick?”
The Center for Leadership Education in Maternal and Child Public Health announces a free campus screening of Unnatural Causes, the award-winning documentary, on Thursday, April 29th, between 5 and 7 PM.
We’ll watch the first two episodes: “In Sickness and In Wealth” and “When the Bough Breaks” (details below) and provide time for discussion afterward. Snacks will be provided. The event is FREE, but registration is required. Please visit http://umn-unnaturalcauses.eventbrite.com
Can’t join us but would like to know more about Unnatural Causes?
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.
UNNATURAL CAUSES | In Sickness and In Wealth | Video clip.
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?