National spotlight on Bayview Hunters Point! PBS NOVA documentary ‘Critical Condition: Health in Black America’

The Hunters Point Biomonitoring Foundation and the San Francisco Bay View newspaper are honored to announce the Bayview Hunters Point Community is spotlighted in the NOVA documentary “Critical Condition: Health In Black America” from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Stanley Nelson.

“This film ultimately explores how science is an aspect of culture and how, when false and misleading ideas about African Americans make their way into science, the impact can be profound and intractable,” observed Nelson, “Critical Condition” director.

The award-winning PBS science series NOVA premiered the feature length documentary on April 30, 2025. It is available for streaming at pbs.org/nova and on the PBS app. Oscar nominated filmmaker Stanley Nelson explores the factors behind health disparities in the U.S., tracing historical roots of false beliefs in our medical system and examining the environmental conditions that contribute to disproportionately poor health outcomes for Black Americans.

“Critical Condition” begins through the lens of a public health crisis that encapsulated larger racial health disparities – COVID-19. During the pandemic, Black Americans faced death rates 2.6 times higher than White Americans, one example of an historical statistical trend across generations who have been more vulnerable to chronic illnesses and high premature death rates from cancer, heart disease and strokes.

One of the most easily verified examples of environmental racism, which was published by the SF Bay View newspaper and shared with the PBS film crew, occurred when Navy consultant Dr. Kathryn Higley, in a government sponsored public meeting held in March of 2022, attributed the high incidences of environmentally linked cancers and diseases seen in Bayview Hunters Point residents to the racist “bad gene” theory.

[See https://sfbayview.com/2022/03/racist-bad-gene-theory-being-applied-to-the-people-of-bayview-hunters-point/.]

“Critical Condition” explores solutions key to improving outcomes for Black Americans, including community based strategies to increase access to food and healthcare, along with fundamental changes to medical education to help a new generation of doctors understand the complex connections between social conditions and health outcomes.

YouTube video of the “Critical Condition” film crew tour of the Hunters Point hilltop led by Derek Toliver can be viewed at https://youtu.be/SWh69pl6DIQ?si=8_QeUwCZh5LK-nNi. 

For HP Biomonitoring, production of the 90 minute feature film “Critical Condition” has been over two years in the making, including three days of hosting the production crew and equipment at the foundation office along with two days of community scouting with the production crew led by members of the Hunters Point Biomonitoring Foundation Board of Directors Derek Toliver and CFO Joseph McGinley, who doubles as a SAG/AFTRA actor! 

NOVA is the most popular primetime science series on American television and the PBS series is one of the most widely distributed science programs around the world, reaching 55 million Americans every year.

“‘Critical Condition’ looks at the impacts of social and environmental factors that undermine Black people’s health before they even visit a doctor. Many Black American communities today have less access to nutritional food, higher levels of air pollution and limited access to quality healthcare with fewer primary health facilities and a dangerous shortage of doctors,” explains NOVA Co-Executive Producer Chris Schmidt.

“‘Critical Condition’ draws on studies conducted globally that document how extreme stress faced by Black American communities leads to worse health outcomes, including genomic research showing how telomere shortening, a normal cellular process involved in aging, is accelerated when people face chronic high stress and challenging life circumstances and explains the biological toll of being Black in America.

“An important part of NOVA’s DNA throughout its long history has been to present films about the most important public health issues of our times … (T)he topic this film examines – a system health crisis – is challenging to confront, but it also offers us a critical opportunity to educate ourselves about the fuller picture as to why these health disparities exist and endure,” concludes Schmidt.

“Critical Condition: Health In Black America” is a NOVA production by Firelight Films. Written, produced and directed by Stanley Nelson. Produced by Cyndee Readdean and Valerie Scoon. Co-produced by Lynneisha Ray and narrated by Tamara Tunie, with major funding provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the California Endowment.

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Source: https://sfbayview.com/2025/05/national-spotlight-on-bayview-hunters-point-pbs-nova-documentary-critical-condition-health-in-black-america/