Award-Winning Documentary Series

Changing the Way Americans Think about Health

To be Rebroadcast by PBS

Unnatural Causes, the prize-winning series exploring the root causes of America’s alarming class and racial health inequities, will be rebroadcast by PBS stations during October (check local listings).

 While Congress debates health care reform, UNNATURAL CAUSES: IS INEQUALITY MAKING US SICK? asks what makes Americans healthy – or sick – in the first place, and offers new remedies for an ailing society. 

The prize-winning, four-hour series crisscrosses the nation to show that health is determined by far more than health care, bad habits, or unlucky genes. UNNATURAL CAUSES circles in on a slow killer in plain view:  the class and racial inequities in the rest of our lives – in the jobs we do, the wealth we enjoy, the neighborhoods we live in - can get under our skin as surely as germs and viruses and kill more Americans in a day than do global pandemics in a year.  It turns out that socio-economic status, race and zip code are even stronger predictors of health and life expectancy than smoking. 

 

Transit Union Leader Testifies at Congressional

Hearing on Metro Crash

Crisis Communications Management Supported ATU

Local 689 Response

Safety. Transparency. Public Funding.  Those priorities were underscored by the  president of ATU Local 689, the union representing DC area transit workers, who delivered testimony at a Congressional hearing probing the June 22 Metrorail crash that claimed the lives of nine people including rail operator Jeanice McMillan. 

Jackie Jeter called for transparency in the ongoing investigation of the accident and enforcement of safety recommendations by Local 689 and the National Transportation Safety Board which is continuing to investigate the causes of the disaster.  Jeter also urged Congress to appropriate more funding to make the nation’s capital public transit a “world class” system. 

The hearing was convened by the Congressional Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service and the District of Columbia on July 14, 2009.    

“Our colleague Jeanice McMillan embodies the spirit of our membership,” noted President Jeter to the subcommittee.  “She paid the ultimate sacrifice and is the hero of the tragic train accident.  Our members go to work every day cognizant of their responsibility to perform a job on behalf of our customers – the riding public.” 

During an extensive Q&A, Jeter provided the subcommittee with insight into specific safety concerns that Union members reported before the June 22nd tragedy but had gone unheeded by the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority.  

McKinney & Associates has represented Local 689, including 10,000 active and retired workers in the DC Metropolitan Area, since 2007.  The firm coordinated crisis management and intensive media relations in connection with last month’s deadly train wreck.  

View Video segments of Jeter in "Downloads" section of Newsroom

 

McKPR Engages with Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to Advance Public Health Issues and Diversity in Health Care Professions

McKinney and Associates is pleased to announce its engagement with The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) as strategic communications counsel. RWJF is the largest U.S. philanthropy dedicated to improving health and health care for all Americans.

McKinney joins the five communications firms selected through a competitive bid to support the communications efforts for the auspicious and broad-reaching Human Capital Portfolio. The Human Capital Portfolio seeks to assure that the nation has a diverse, well-trained leadership and workforce in the delivery and management of the nation’s health systems. McKinney has been selected as lead firm to oversee communications management and strategic counsel of the portfolio.

McKinney is also providing communications strategy and support to the Praxis Project, the national program office administering the Communities Creating Healthy Environments (CCHE) initiative, part of the Foundation’s Childhood Obesity Portfolio. The firm is working to strategically advance the framework that places systems, equity and community resources as having a direct impact on rates of childhood obesity, particularly within communities of color.

McKinney is recognized as a leader in multicultural communications. The work with RWJF is a reflection of the firm’s expanded focus on public health and health equity.