What's happening to our health?

While we pour more and more money into drugs, dietary supplements and new medical technologies, a groundbreaking new documentary series crisscrosses the country investigating the findings that are shaking up conventional beliefs about what really makes us healthy - or sick.

Beginning at 10 p.m. Thursdays beginning Thursday-April 17, PBS will air Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?'' on Cox Channel 3.

It turns out there's much more to our health than health care, bad habits or unlucky genes. There's a hidden killer in plain view: the social, economic and physical environments in which we are born, live and work profoundly affect our well-being and longevity.

The four-hour series coincides with the presidential election-year debates regarding the estimated 47 million Americans who lack health coverage.

But "Unnatural Causes'' goes further, asking what makes us ill in the first place. The series probes why one's economic status, race and zip code are even more powerful predictors of health and life expectancy than smoking. Each episode sheds light on the mounting evidence that work, wealth, neighborhood conditions and lack of access to power and resources can get under the skin and disrupt human biology as surely as germs and viruses.

Experts and public health professionals emphasize that because these conditions are distributed unequally, so are patterns of chronic disease: e.g., heart disease, stroke, diabetes, asthma, even some cancers.

The series reveals a continuous health gradient tied to wealth. Life is longer and healthier at the top. Evidence also suggests that racial discrimination imposes an additional health burden. With many diseases, African Americans, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders - at all income levels - fare worse on average than their white counterparts.