In the series Unnatural Causes, the episode In Sickness and in Wealth takes place in Louisville, Kentucky. The episode begins by saying how America has a lot of wealth and health care, but our overall wealth is ranked very low from other countries. Many people are sick, infant mortality is high and health care availability is not 100% to blame. The determinants of health come from economic status, income, education and social determinant of health. In some areas of the state that are close to each other there are some that are dying 5 to 10 years earlier than others, and the map showed, how in different sicknesses, this could be seen as well in other maps, the patterns are the same for cancer and hearth disease.
This episode reflects on three different people from different economic status. The first is Jim Taylor, a father, grandfather and C.E.O., he lives in district 16. He states that he is almost 60 and is pretty healthy, he still keeps active and has a very high income. He live in a safe neighborhood where he can exercise and live calm.
Tondra Young lives in district 24, she is 37, and a lab supervisor. She is financially comfortable, she was better than her mom and goes to school. In comparison to Jim’s district, of an average age of 79.3 years, Tondra’s is 75.3 years, four years less.
Corey Anderson lives in council district 21, with his wife and children. Both Corey and his wife work full time and have an income of $48,000. Corey being 37 years old, has already been diagnosed with hyper tension and about 1/3 of the resident of this district are the same. In this neighborhood, life expectancy is 73.4 years, two years less than in Tondra’s and six years than Jim’s. In this area there are a lot of fat food places, small businesses, liquor stores. The show says that these differences are not natural but rather man made from policies or lack of policies. There are many things lacking in this area that other districts have that help them have better health and a higher average age.
Every time I watch this it still amazes me, how it one small area people’s health is so different, and they come from differences that are hard to change. As we have seen in class, income, education really effect each individual’s health in a big way. Each example that they show in this video shows how some small changes have a huge impact on the health of certain people. Have you noticed these changes in your own cities?
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