What Happens When Crises Collide? Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change as a Global Syndemic
Three Interconnected Crises Stand as the Primary Health Challenge of the 21st Century Beyond the Pandemic: Why You Need to Know What a ‘Syndemic’ Is : Nowadays, talking about pandemics is no longer just an abstract exercise for microbiologists and specialized researchers. When we face public health threats today (such as the recent Hantavirus episode), we often speak anxiously about the future, even when the actual risk of a global pandemic in that specific case remains extremely low . However, focusing strictly on traditional viral pandemics misses a much larger threat. To understand modern health crises, we have to look at what the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) calls a syndemic : the clustering of two or more health issues within a population, driven by social and structural inequities, which compounds the harm done to a community. Introduction to Syndemics As researcher Kristina E. Rudd noted, “ Syndemic theory , with its roots in medical ...