Syndemic

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Syndemics combine the synergies of epidemics to evaluate how social and health conditions travel together, in what ways they interact, and what upstream drivers may produce their interactions.^[1] The idea of syndemics is that no disease exists in isolation and that often population health can be understood through a confluence of factors (such as climate change or social inequality) that produces multiple health conditions that afflict some populations and not others.^[2] Syndemics are not like pandemics (where the same social forces produce clustered conditions equally around the world); instead, syndemics reflect population-level trends within certain states, regions, cities, or towns.^[3][4]

A syndemic or synergistic epidemic is generally understood to be the aggregation of two or more concurrent or sequential epidemics or disease clusters in a population with biological interactions, which exacerbate the prognosis and burden of disease. The term was developed by Merrill Singer in the early 1990s to call attention to the synergistic nature of the health and social problems facing the poor and underserved.^[5] Syndemics develop under health disparity, caused by poverty, stress, climate, or structural violence and are studied by epidemiologists and medical anthropologists concerned with public health, community health and the effects of social conditions on health. The concept was translated from anthropology to a larger audience in 2017, with the publication of a Series on Syndemics in The Lancet, led by Emily Mendenhall.^[6]

The syndemic approach departs from the biomedical approach to diseases to diagnostically isolate, study, and treat diseases as distinct entities separate from other diseases and independent of social contexts.