SOURCE: Singer M, Bulled N, Ostrach B, Mendenhall E. Syndemics and the biosocial conception of health. Lancet 2017;389:941-950.
Unless one has studied sociology or anthropology extensively, “syndemics” probably is unfamiliar. Syndemics is the aggregation of two or more concurrent or sequential epidemics or disease clusters in a population with biological interactions that exacerbate the prognosis and burden of disease. Merrill Singer (a coauthor of the study under discussion here) has been credited with creating the term.
The reason one likely will hear much more about syndemics is that global health issues often are strongly driven by syndemics. For instance, the syndemic syndrome SAVA (substance abuse, violence, and AIDS) reflects the consequences of poverty, inner-city residence, unemployment, disrupted social networks, lack of social support, and ethnic inequalities that also result in endemic/epidemic status for disorders such as tuberculosis, sexually transmitted infections, hepatitis, infant mortality, suicide, and more.
Probably the closest terminology most have used is “biopsychosocial.” That is to say, it is becoming ever clearer that disease incidence, prevalence, comorbid disease, and disease outcomes are much more complex than the equation germ + host = disease. Hopefully, as policymakers become more aware of the wisdom of addressing public health issues from the perspective of syndemics, improved outcomes will occur.
Hopefully, as policymakers become more aware of the wisdom of addressing public health issues from the perspective of syndemics, improved outcomes will occur.
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