The Cook County Health Department is using a documentary to address healthcare problems in the Chicago area. The film is called Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? And it focuses on health disparities along racial and ethnic lines around the U.S. Jim Bloyd is with the Cook County Public Health Department. He says the film highlights how social factors and public policy affect health.

BLOYD: It’s important that policy makers are educated about this and that grassroots reach out and contact school district officials, their local elected officials to let them know that they’re concerned about being able to practice healthy behaviors if food is unaffordable, if housing is unaffordable.

The documentary features two local physicians who’ve done research on infant mortality rates among black and white women in Chicago. The city has partnered with community health organizations to plan film screenings. Next month they’ll offer free training to promote health equity at the grassroots level.