For the last 25 years, in my work as an applied medical anthropologist, I have called attention to and explored syndemics, the biosocial adverse interaction of two or more diseases and the social conditions of the local or regional context in which they occur. The study of syndemics offers a way to address both health risks and unjust and …
This article is part of the following series: Dispatches from the pandemic
On April 24, 1980, Ken Horne, a San Francisco resident, was reported to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) as a young man suffering with an old man’s disease, Kaposi’s sarcoma. Subsequently, in 1981, the CDC identified Horne as the first patient in the US of what would (in 1982) come to be called AIDS. By June 5, 1981, a …
This article is part of the following series: Climate change and health
Five years ago, the University College London Commission concluded that climate change is the biggest threat to human health in the 21st century. Health has entered a new epoch in which environmental factors, under adverse human influence, must become the focus worldwide. This recognition sparked the planetary health initiative, spearheaded by The Lancet, which is motivated by acceptance …
Science, Medicine, and Anthropology