Overview:

Single-payer health care supporter Steve Whitman, PhD, who died in 2014, was responsible for the epidemiological work on which the book Heat Wave and this movie are based. Video on racial and ethnic health disparities in Chicago here. 

A single-payere health care system is necessary but not sufficient for addressing health disparities, including during natural disasters. 

From the Gene Siskel Film Center:

Chicago premiere! Filmmakers in person!

Inspired by Eric Klineberg’s book, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Helfand (BLUE VINYL) takes a hard, personal, and often quirky look at the inequity of natural disaster, beginning with her family’s own experience of Hurricane Sandy. She ultimately zeroes in on Chicago’s shockingly inadequate response to the deadly July 1995 heatwave, during which the city morgue overflowed with the sudden deaths of 726 citizens, largely the elderly and people of color from the city’s impoverished South and West Side. This audacious look at natural disaster American-style starts with the stark premise that a zip code can be an accurate predictor of life or death when nature unleashes its worst. With increasing frequency and force, climate change sets the agenda for hurricanes, floods, heat waves, and such, but systemic neglect, deep poverty, and political expediency have already drawn the line between the survivors and the doomed, even before disaster strikes. DCP digital. (BS)

Information on special programs with the director and production crew here. 

Information on theater accessibility here.