Unhealthy Cuts
Our Mission
Education through documentary storytelling.
We are Educators
Wail of a Tale is not a typical media company. We are a humanitarian-driven 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to equity and social justice. Our expertise lies in policy analysis, with a focus on racialized and marginalized communities. Through documentary filmmaking, we explore the social and political determinants of health, amplifying the voices of women and communities historically dismissed or disparaged.
We see storytelling as a powerful tool for education and advocacy—engaging students, organizations, the public, and policymakers to drive meaningful change. Grounded in academic and investigative research, we shine a light on overlooked narratives, providing hope and inspiring concrete action to build a more just society. We produce waves for social change. Join us.
Unhealthy Cuts
The Human Cost of Policy Decisions
As authoritarianism tightens its grip on a fractured America, Unhealthy Cuts exposes how the calculated dismantling of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has turned public health into a political weapon, erasing data, silencing experts, and endangering millions. Told in five gripping segments, this docuseries weaves lived experience, investigative reporting, and historical warning signs to reveal not only what was lost, but what must rise in its place: a public health system rebuilt with equity, transparency, and community power at its core.
Synopsis
Unhealthy Cuts: The Human Cost of Policy Decisions is a five-part documentary series that exposes how the U.S. public health system is actively being dismantled—through targeted personnel purges, the erasure of critical health data, and the quiet rollback of life-saving programs. As authoritarian influence resurges in 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services becomes ground zero in a broader project to consolidate power, suppress science, and destabilize democratic institutions.
Each episode captures this moment of crisis in real time. Former Biden-era HHS leaders share what they saw—and how they were pushed out. Public health workers describe being abandoned by the federal government just as communities face compounding health threats. Families on the ground navigate a collapsing system with little support. We meet a CDC scientist whose team is dissolved mid-study, a tribal health liaison whose program funding disappears overnight, and a mother whose child can no longer access coordinated care.
Told through vérité scenes, whistleblower interviews, leaked documents, and visualized data, Unhealthy Cuts brings viewers inside the machinery of disinformation, institutional sabotage, and policy regression. But the series doesn’t end in despair. The final episode, Rebuild, introduces a forward-looking vision shaped by those still fighting—former public servants, grassroots coalitions, and policy architects working to reconstruct a health system that centers equity, transparency, and collective care.
This is not a retrospective. It’s a warning unfolding now—and a call to action, before the damage becomes irreversible.
Spring 2025