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A statement from the Executive Producer
LARRY ADELMAN
Series Executive Producer & Co-Director of California NewsreelIt often
appears that we Americans are obsessed with health. Media outlets trumpet
the latest gene and drug discoveries, dietary supplements line shelf after
shelf in the supermarket and a multi-billion dollar industry of magazines,
videos and spas sells healthy "lifestyles." We spend more than twice what
the average rich country spends per person on medical care.
Yet we have among the worst disease outcomes of any industrialized nation
- and the greatest health inequities. It's not just the poor who are sick.
Even the middle classes die, on average, almost three years sooner than
the rich.
At every step down the socio-economic ladder, African Americans, Native
Americans and Pacific Islanders often fare worse than their white
counterparts. Interestingly, that?s not the case for most new groups of
immigrants of color. Recent Latino immigrants, for example, though
typically poorer than the average American, have better health. But the
longer they live here, the more their health advantage erodes.
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.
Healthy behaviors, molecular research, and of course, universal health
care are all important. But evidence suggests they miss the most vital
factor of all: how the social circumstances in which we are born, live and
work can get under our skin and disrupt our biology as surely as germs and
viruses.
We produced UNNATURAL CAUSES 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.
The unequal distribution of these social conditions - and their health
consequences - are not natural or inevitable. They are the result of
choices that we as a community, as states, and as a nation have made, and
can make differently. Other nations already have, and they live longer,
healthier lives as a result.
We hope that UNNATURAL CAUSES and its companion tools will help you work
towards better health by bringing into view how economic justice, racial
equality and caring communities may be the best medicines of all.
Larry Adelman
Executive Producer
March 2008
Of related interest:
Poverty and Policy in Canada: Implications for Health and Quality of Life
by Dennis Raphael
Foreword by Jack Layton
http://tinyurl.com/2hg2df
Staying Alive: Critical Perspectives on Health, Illness, and Health Care,
edited by Dennis Raphael, Toba Bryant, and Marcia Rioux
Foreword by Gary Teeple
http://tinyurl.com/2zqrox
Social Determinants of Health: Canadian Perspectives, edited by Dennis
Raphael
Foreword by Roy Romanow
http://tinyurl.com/yptzae
See a lecture! The Politics of Population Health
http://msl.stream.yorku.ca/mediasite/viewer/?peid=ac604170-9ccc-4268-a1af-9a9e04b28e1d
Also, presentation on Politics and Health at the Centre for Health
Disparities in Cleveland Ohio
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4129139685624192201&hl=en
Dennis Raphael, PhD
Professor and Undergraduate Program Director
School of Health Policy and Management
York University
4700 Keele Street
Toronto ON M3J 1P3
416-736-2100, ext. 22134
email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.atkinson.yorku.ca/draphael
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