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.
It is possible for two afflictions to be comorbid, but not syndemic i.e., the disorders are not epidemic in the studied population, or their co-occurrence does not cause an interaction that then contributes to worsened health.
Syndemic theory seeks to draw attention to and provide a framework for the analysis of adverse disease interactions, including their causes and consequences for human life and well-being.
[13][14] Methods for evaluating syndemics have been a focus on scholarship for deepening the application of what has largely served as theory to understand why and how social and health conditions cluster together, interact, and are driven by shared forces, from climate (such as escalation of heat, rain, drought, and events) to poverty (such as food insecurity, poor housing, lack of safety, and limited work opportunities).
[15] In 2022, Alexander Tsai (an epidemiologist), Emily Mendenhall (a medical anthropologist), and Timothy Newfield (a historian) teamed up on a Special Issue in Social Science and Medicine to explore the various methodological ways in which syndemics can be understood, interpreted, and evaluated through history.
Ethnographic insights have served as the bedrock of syndemic thinking since Merrill Singer's pioneering intellectual and practical work with the concept beginning in the 1990s.
His first article based on ethnographic thinking about the SAVA Syndemic came from real time observations as the AIDS epidemic that unfolded in tandem with substance use amidst structural violence in urban America throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
[19] Singer demonstrated how it was impossible to think about one condition without contextualizing the broader social, structural, and health contexts in which people lived.
[23] Epidemiological data provides opportunities to investigate the synergistic ways in which diseases emerge and interact with social and health conditions.
Thus, in 1872, Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano stated: "as they become convinced that they can no longer rely upon the supply of game for their support, they will return to the more reliable source of subsistence [i.e., farming]."
Under extremely stressful conditions, with inadequate diets, and as victims of overt racism on the part of the registration agents appointed to oversee Indian reserves, the Sioux confronted infectious disease from contact with whites.
Thus followed epidemics of measles, grippe [influenza], and whooping cough Pertussis, in rapid succession and with terrible fatal results..." Similarly, the Handbook of American Indians notes, "The least hopeful conditions in this respect prevail among the Dakota [Sioux] and other tribes of the colder northern regions, where pulmonary tuberculosis and scrofula are very common... Other more common diseases, are various forms of, bronchitis ...pneumonia, pleurisy, and measles in the young.
Indian children were removed to white boarding schools and diagnosed with a wide range of diseases, including tuberculosis, trachoma, measles, smallpox, whooping cough, influenza, and pneumonia.
[citation needed] There were three influenza pandemics during the 20th century that caused widespread illness, mortality, social disruption, and significant economic losses.
In each case, mortality rates were determined primarily by five factors: the number of people who became infected, the virulence of the virus causing the pandemic, the speed of global spread, the underlying features and vulnerabilities of the most affected populations, and the effectiveness and timeliness of the prevention and treatment measures that were implemented.
A little over a decade later, the comparatively mild Hong Kong influenza pandemic erupted due to the spread of a virus strain (H3N2) that genetically was related to the more deadly form seen in 1957.
More people died of the so-called Spanish flu (caused by the H1N1 viral strain) pandemic in the single year of 1918 than during all four-years of the Black Death.
The pandemic had devastating effects as disease spread along trade and shipping routes and other corridors of human movement until it had circled the globe.
It has been argued that countless numbers of those who expired quickly from the disease were co-infected with tuberculosis, which would explain the notable plummet in TB cases after 1918.
Allergic diseases constitute the sixth leading cause of chronic illness in the United States, impacting 17 percent of the population.
For every elevation of 10 μg/m3 in particulate matter concentration in the air a six percent increase in cardiopulmonary deaths occurs according to research by the American Cancer Society.
Exhaust from the burning of diesel fuel is a complex mixture of vapors, gases, and fine particles, including over 40 known pollutants like nitrogen oxide and known or suspected carcinogenic substances such as benzene, arsenic, and formaldehyde.
"This immunologic evidence may help explain the epidemiologic studies indicating that children living along major trucking thoroughfares are at increased risk for asthmatic and allergic symptoms and are more likely to have respiratory dysfunction."
Epidemiological modelers unite several types of information and analytic capacity, including: 1) mathematical equations and computational algorithms; 2) computer technology; 3) epidemiological knowledge about infectious disease dynamics, including information about specific pathogens and disease vectors; and 4) research data on social conditions and human behavior.
Their model also suggests that HIV has contributed to the wider geographic spread of malaria in Africa, a process previously thought to be the consequence primarily of global warming.