Unnatural Causes

4/1/2009

In recognition of Minority Health Month, St. Vincent Charity Hospital Diversity Committee and the Community Outreach Department presented:

Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?

Community members were invited in to watch segments of this award-winning PBS documentary exploring socio-economic and racial inequities in health and joined in the conversation about factors that influence health inequity in our own communities.

"I will tell you that in the City of Cleveland when we started 20-something years ago in the shadow of some of the finest hospitals in the world where kings and shahs come from across ocean, you're infant mortality rate was actually higher around those esteemed institutions than in some of the communities that are further east. And so this is not just an access problem, this is not just an income problem, this is not just a black problem, I would ask you that as you look through this series and as you decide which part of the vineyard you're going to labor in that you look beyond what we're being told because what we're being told is not the whole story. We need to tell the story and craft the solutions from the perspective of our community," Cheryl A. Boyce, Executive Director of the Ohio Commission on Minority Health.