Unnatural Causes Summary

From this film, the key points that were mentioned about how socioeconomic backgrounds and race impact one’s health is something that is not as emphasized as it should be in the public eye. Especially how health and wealth are intertwined with each other is particularly frustrating since health should be a human right and people should receive the health they need regardless of their economic

According to Riegelman and Kirkwood (2015) there are many social determinants that influence our health. These may include, but are not limited to; income, educational level, culture, and professional status. All of these things can contribute to our health, because they are the things we are surrounded with: a way of life. Most of these determinants are structurally unequal. This means that a person doesn’t have a choice, but to be part of that determinant. We do not have the choice of being born into a rich or poor family, what culture we are raised in, and so on. These inequalities lead to heath disparities. Health disparities are the differences between groups’ health that are/ can be caused by structural inequalities (Disparities 2017). For example, Henrietta Lacks came from a poor family and her health was negatively affected by the social determinants that come along with that lifestyle. On the other hand, we could look at a rich family during that time and their health could have been positively affected. We will look at how different social determinants caused Henrietta Lacks to experience both structural inequalities and heath disparities.

This video made a lot of sense to me because not having a job can stress out you all types of ways. If a person has no source of income, no provide food, have shelter, and pay bills this causes stress. The health disparities in this video are from the employees being laid off, more ER visit was made from the stress which causes chronic diseases to form. The employees had to watch their expenses and buy cheaper food or find another way to work but for lower income. What is the job status of all employees that got laid off? Did the employees find other work? Did they have to settle for a lower income job? Some of their programs consist of employment fairs now, the unemployment checks, and in the video if they were going to school they received more money.

Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making us Sick, clearly explored the relationship between socioeconomic status and health, it was said that college graduates live 2.5 years longer than high school graduates” (California Newsreel, 2008). This documentary illustrated how one’s level of education not only impacts their quality of life, but also impacts the duration of one’s life.

Contrary to what many people believe, America’s health status is not quite “up-to-par,” to say the least. Over forty-seven million people in the United States lack health insurance; that is more than 15% of our nation’s population! At first this disturbing truth seems impossible to believe, being as America is one of the most technologically advanced and economically developed countries in the world. “We spend trillions of dollars per year on medical care. That’s nearly half of all the health dollars spent in the world. But we’ve seen our statistics. We live shorter, often sicker lives than almost every other industrialized nation. “We rank 30th in [global] life expectancy” (Adelman 2008). Knowing this brings rise to the question: why are

The video Unnatural Causes: In Sickness and in Health highlights the various disparities that impact population health outcomes among different groups. The frequency of violence and crime is one such feature that impacts health. Areas affected with an increased prevalence of violence and crime, will likely have residents that feel unsafe outside their homes. If patrons are not safe in their homes or neighborhoods, they are less likely to active within their community. This particularly affects children. If they are unable to play outside safely, there are more likely to live sedentary lives as they grow into adulthood. This impacts population health because a sedentary lifestyle increases the risk for developing certain cancers and other poor

The promotion of health is vastly switching into exposing what could be America's racist health care system. People have reason to believe that there are different health care for each race, gender, class, and sexuality. In A Conceptual Framework For Understanding Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality, by Lynn Weber, there is a suggestion of power relationships playing a role in different health care. Different health care is dictated by hierarchies determining who gets what kind of health care. Two positions are head-to-head with each other, "There are power hierarchies in which one group exerts control over another, securing its position of dominance in the system, and in which substantial material and nonmaterial resources-such as wealth, income, or access to health care and education-are at stake" (Weber, 20). An example of this is the Flint, Michigan water crisis. Flint, Michigan has pipes that do not produce healthy, nutritious water for residents, but instead gives out lead-poisoned water. The water crisis

The Unnatural Causes: Becoming American video, discusses how recent Mexican immigrants are substantially healthier than Americans. The video also explains how several factors of an American lifestyle contribute to the demise of good health among Mexican immigrants after having lived in the U.S. for a long time. Lastly, the video highlights important differences between the Mexican and American culture that contribute to psychiatric illness. Recent Mexican immigrants are significantly healthier than Americans for several reasons.

Income is an important element of the social determinants of health because it appears in many different experiences and is a key determinant of the premature mortality and premature years of lives lost from diseases among Canadians (Raphael, 2009, p 8). The poor are those who fall below the low-income cut off line as established from Statistics Canada’s data. Such people do not have the basic income for food, clothing or shelter. These are people who are either unemployed, laid - off, non-beneficiaries of social service assistance just to mention a few and are unlikely to have three meals a day. Curry -Stevens (2009, p. 52) explained that those at the bottom already show the worst form of market failure and as a result their market income is not enough for themselves and their families to survive on.

The Yakama people in White Swan refer to themselves as the invisible city, because even though they exist in a fairly well off county in America, one of the richest countries in the world, their harsh poverty goes unnoticed. Their description of watching fancy cars drive by on Route 97 without anyone ever stopping to help is a tragic reality for the people in White Swan, and an accurate image of American’s ignorance of Native poverty. For my area category, I am going to be researching poverty on Native American reservations, in order to shed light on an issue that is important and even existence is often disregarded. While researching poverty among Native Americans on reservations, and specifically on the Yakama reservation I am learning of

From watching “Unnatural Causes (When the bough breaks)”, I learned many interesting facts. This film definitely related to Film #1 because I learned more about what stress can cause. In this film, it spoke about why African American women are giving birth to babies who have low birth weight, premature, which leads to a higher percentage of infant mortality. This rate is very high compared to White American women, who are giving birth to healthy infants. Researchers hypothesized that the reason for this is because of racism/discrimination, lack of education, and problems from the past. The outcomes of these problems lead to stress. I remember in the first film, it was mentioned that stress can lead to a shorter life. I wasn’t surprised when this film mentioned that it also leads to premature and low birth weight babies. It made me feel very emotional.

The lives of the characters in the film Unnatural Causes exemplifies concepts like the wealth-health gradient and the importance of power and control. As the narrator in the film states the wealth health gradient is: 70% of affluent Americans report that they’ve got good health this is twice as many as people who are poor in America. The lives of the lives of Jim Taylor, Tondra Young, Corey Anderson and Mary Turner exemplify the concept because they all are living proof that the wealth health gradient is accurate. Jim Taylor is the CEO of the hospital and goes on the explain that he has a very fortunate lifestyle. He says him and his family has time to exercise and they don’t have huge demands when the family isn’t working.

The Artefact Explanation: the inequalities debate sees ill health as a biological entity, which differs between social classes.

“The social positions that individuals occupy help to determine who they are, what they think and do, where they are going, and what happens to them” (pg.256 Social Inequality). The film The One Percent spoke of inequality and served as an example regarding how the rich remain in control of political policies that allow them to acquire more wealth while limiting opportunities for the poor. “It easier to cleanse the earth of these people and send them to the far reaches of the universe” (Class film). This type of mentality has attributed to the reduction of positive life chances among the poor population. Many underprivileged individuals were denied safety (community police), education, and housing based on bias. “Those with lower levels of

Control of destiny as defined by Leonard Syme refers to various factors that play a critical role in determining the life as well as the health of individuals. They influence the life of an individual in a great way (Castillo, David 2). For instance, individual income as stated by Syme influences the health of an individual. The documentary serves as good evidence to indicate that the relationship between individual health risks and some incomes they can generate is inversely proportional. It means therefore that individual with a high income have a decreased health risks compared to the life of individuals with low risk. The fact that wealth plays an important role in determining individual health risks is well explained in the documentary. Professor Syme illustrates that these trends are common in the United States as well as other developed countries where the gap between the rich and the poor is extremely high. The risks of developing chronic illness as well as cancer follow the same trend. Heart complications also follow the same pattern with the rich having a few probability of developing the heart complication compared to the poor. The United States as stated by Professor Syme is the country where most citizens aren’t able to access quality medical as well as general healthcare in addition to mental health care services. This is because the gap between the Have and The Have Not is extremely high. The unemployed who are the low-income earners in some