Using Unnatural Causes to educate and advocate for health equity

The WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health wrote: “Evidence is rarely if ever sufficient by itself to catalyze political action. In political terms, what might be at least as crucial as the evidence itself is the ‘story' in which it is embedded.”

But how do we construct a new health story? How is the prevailing individual, bio-medical discourse—a story of doctors, drugs, behaviors and genes—ruptured and replaced by an ecological, or social determinants, story rooted in social justice? What role can a film play in expanding this dialog?

Unnatural Causes, a four-hour series for PBS broadcast and available on DVD, explores the underlying causes of the nation's socio-economic and racial disparities in health—and searches for solutions. In Fall 2007, organizations across the country will start using the series and its support tools as part of a national campaign to reframe the debate over health and what we as a society can and should do to tackle health inequities.

The case studies of three organizations using Unnatural Causes in non-classroom settings—a city health department, an advocacy organization, and a community-based organization—help us better understand how new paradigms for health can get ‘traction' with the public. How are these groups organizing their events, eliciting audience pre-conceptions before the screening, providing a framework for ‘active' viewing, throwing attention off the screen and back upon the audience and their own community, and promoting further investigation and involvement in the issues? What resistances do they encounter? And how effective are they?