Global research on syndemics: A meta-knowledge analysis (2001-2020) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Syndemics and Human Health: Implications for Prevention and Intervention
Annals of Anthropological Practice, 2012
Use of the syndemics concept has diffused from medical anthropology to an array of healthrelated disciplines. This development reflects a growing awareness that diseases and disease sufferers do not exist in a vacuum and that many of the most damaging human epidemics are the possible or probable consequence, not of a single disease acting alone but of several diseases acting in tandem. Syndemics offer a useful conceptual framework for the study of global health inequality. As work guided by a syndemics perspective is conducted on a range of diseases and in diverse regions of the world, the practical health implications of this approach are beginning to unfold. [syndemics, practical applications, funding for syndemics research] ANNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICE 36.2,
From Ecology to Syndemic: Accounting for the Synergy of Epidemics
Bifrost, 2020
As a concept that helps to “illuminate the entangled, rhizomatic connections between climate change and contagions of various kinds,” the term “syndemic” (a portmanteau combining the ideas of synergy and epidemic coined by medical anthropologist Merrill Singer) may be an appropriate way to consider the many interlinked human tragedies occurring during the global COVID-19 emergency. Such synergetic factors can exacerbate the effects of poverty and increased food insecurities, with significant feedbacks that ultimately influence malnutrition and other health crises affecting specific groups of people at a particular time and place. Depending on the illnesses that co-align in a particular outbreak, any number of other conditions (depression, hypertension, anxiety — including climate anxiety, stress, environmental toxicity, or even solastalgia) could potentially come into play and significantly exacerbate ill health effects within a syndemic. In their short essay on COVID-19 as a possible syndemic, Joni Adamson and Steven Hartman note that “risks of serious illness and death from COVID-19 are highest in individuals with underlying conditions,” including many that “correlate meaningfully with socio-economic circumstances, education-level and other institutionalized societal factors." In the special issue of Bifrost devoted to environmental humanities responses to the 2020 pandemic, authors Joni Adamson and Steven Hartman note in their short on COVID-19 as a possible syndemic that “risks of serious illness and death from COVID-19 are highest in individuals with underlying conditions,” including many that “correlate meaningfully with socio-economic circumstances, education-level and other institutionalized societal factors." As the authors argue, the syndemic concept buttresses what we have learned about the inextricability of social and environmental factors from the environmental justice movement concerning health, well-being and justice. An expanded understanding of what a ‘global syndemic’ might mean allows us to see the shared social, biological, and historical drivers of pandemics.
Syndemic: A Synergistic Anthropological Approach to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Encyclopedia
This review describes the relationship between the coronavirus-related pandemic and health inequities. The latter are linked to pre-existing social and economic discriminations in terms of access to healthcare for people affected by chronic diseases. We believe that we are living in a “syndemic pandemic”. The term “syndemic” was originally developed by the medical anthropologist Merrill Singer in the 1990s in order to recognize the correlation between HIV/AIDS, illicit drug use, and violence in the United States. This complex interplay exacerbated the burden of the disease and the prognosis of the patient. Similarly, in COVID-19 infection, socio-economic, ethnic, and racial inequities result in higher morbidity and mortality in certain sections of society. Unfortunately, such differences are becoming too common during the COVID-19 pandemic, in terms of the incidence and prevalence of the disease, as well as inequal access to new medical advances and life-saving therapeutics for thos...
IEEE Access
Corona pandemic has affected the whole world, and it is a highly researched area in biological sciences. As the current pandemic has affected countries socially and economically, the purpose of this bibliometric analysis is to provide a holistic review of the corona pandemic in the field of social sciences. This study aims to highlight significant, influential aspects, research streams, and themes. We have reviewed 395 journal articles related to coronavirus in the field of social sciences from 2003 to 2020. We have deployed 'biblioshiny' a web-interface of the 'bibliometrix 3.0' package of R-studio to conduct bibliometric analysis and visualization. In the field of social sciences, we have reported influential aspects of coronavirus literature. We have found that the 'Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report' is the top journal. The core article of coronavirus literature is 'Guidelines for preventing health-care-associated pneumonia'. The most commonly used word, in titles, abstracts, author's keywords, and keywords plus, is 'SARS'. Top affiliation is 'The University of Hong Kong'. Hong Kong is a leading country based on citations, and the USA is on top based on total publications. We have used a conceptual framework to identify potential research streams and themes in coronavirus literature. Four research streams are found by deploying a co-occurrence network. These research streams are 'Social and economic effects of epidemic disease', 'Infectious disease calamities and control', 'Outbreak of COVID 19,' and 'Infectious diseases and the role of international organizations'. Finally, a thematic map is used to provide a holistic understanding by dividing significant themes into basic or transversal, emerging or declining, motor, highly developed, but isolated themes. These themes and subthemes have proposed future directions and critical areas of research.
F1000Research
The concept of vulnerability has been widely used in global health research to assess susceptibility to diseases and disasters in individuals and groups. This perspective has proven to be useful for policy making by bringing attention to the unequal distribution of risks and impacts in specific populations and contexts. However, it is often insufficient to explain interactions between environmental, zoonotic, and social realms involved in the experience of health and disease. Theoretical developments proposed under the syndemics approach have intended to explore this gap by studying the underlying political, economic, and social dynamics affecting the occurrence of overlapping health issues. During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the term syndemics has been used to refer to underlying conditions and social factors impacting disease outcomes. This scoping review aims to explore the contributions of the syndemics perspective to the (re)conceptualization of vulnerabil...
COVID research across the social sciences in 2020: a bibliometric approach
Scientometrics
Research on the COVID-19 pandemic has produced an incredible volume of social science research. To explore the initial areas of COVID-19 scholarship, the following study uses bibliometric co-citation network analysis on data from Clarivate's Web of Science database to analyze 3327 peer-reviewed studies published during the first year of the pandemic and their 107,396 shared references. Findings indicate nine distinct disciplinary research clusters centered around a single medical core of COVID-19 pandemic research. Topics ranging from tourism collapse, fear scales, financial contagion, health surveillance, shifts in crime rates, quarantine psychology, and collective trauma among others are found to have emerged in this initial phase of research as covid spread across the world. A corresponding infodemic highlights early communication challenges and a broader need to thwart misinformation. As this body of work continues to grow across the social sciences, key intersections, shared themes, and long-term implications of this historic event are brought into view.
Healthcare
The COVID-19-pandemic-related economic and social crises are leading to huge challenges for all spheres of human life across the globe. Various challenges highlighted by this pandemic include, but are not limited to, the need for global health cooperation and security, better crisis management, coordinated funding in public health emergencies, and access to measures related to prevention, treatment and control. This systematic review explores health, economic and social development issues in a COVID-19 pandemic context and aftermath. Accordingly, a methodology that focuses on identifying relevant literature with a focus on meta-analysis is used. A protocol with inclusion and exclusion criteria was developed, with articles from 15 December 2019 to 15 March 2022 included in the study. This was followed by a review and data analysis. The research results reveal that non-pharmaceutical measures like social distancing, lockdown and quarantine have created long-term impacts on issues such...
A Bibliography on Socio-economic and Cultural Impacts of Covid-19 Pandemic
Library Philosophy and Practice, 2021
The study compiled bibliographic reference sources on the socioeconomic and cultural impacts of coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic around the world. The paper filled a crucial knowledge gap in LIS literature due to paucity of bibliographic information sources on this contemporary topic. The bibliographic materials focused on books, e-books, journals, newspaper, news, reports and reviews, thesis and dissertation, with subjects on any or the combination of social, economic and cultural impacts of Covid-19 across the world. The scope of the literatures was limited to publications in the year 2020 as most articles where produced during that period in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The study methodological approach involved queries on scholarly databases such as Google Scholar, ICatalogue, African Journal Online (AJOL), Sabinet, Emerald Insight, ProQuest, EBSCOhost, Elsevier, Medline, Taylor and Frances, JSTOR, and Springer link, using the University of KwaZulu-Natal library web portal. The search strategy involved the formulation of keywords, phrases and terms related to the topic and the use of Boolean operators (AND, OR) to combine terms to optimize retrievals. The outcome was the compilation of 460 bibliographic reference sources indexed using titles and subjects to aid researchers across the world with quick and reliable bibliographic reference sources to investigate the three dimensional impacts of coronavirus pandemic.
The COVID-19 Contagion–Pandemic Dyad: A View from Social Sciences
Societies
The objective of this concept paper focuses on the relevance of the analytical potential of Social Sciences for understanding the multiple implications and challenges posed by the COVID-19 contagion–pandemic dyad. This pandemic is generating a global threat with a high number of deaths and infected individuals, triggering enormous pressure on health systems. Most countries have put in place a set of procedures based on social distancing, as well as (preventive) isolation from possible infected and transmitters of the disease. This crisis has profound implications and raises issues for which the contribution of Social Sciences does not seem to be sufficiently mobilised. The contribution of Social Sciences is paramount, in terms of their knowledge and skills, to the knowledge of these problematic realities and to act in an informed way on these crises. Social Sciences are a scientific project focused on interdisciplinarity, theoretical and methodological plurality. This discussi...
Syndemics: Considerations for Interdisciplinary Research
Somatosphere: Science, Medicine, and Anthropology, 2019
In this short piece, I explore how medical anthropology could be deployed through interdisciplinary collaborations in a way that is both theoretically rich and poised to positively impact health outcomes. In particular, I consider how research agendas focused on improving health care outcomes reveal certain limitations and underlying assumptions within the discipline. What types of methodological shifts might occur if we interrogate those limitations and assumptions? What are some alternatives? To answer these questions, I turn to the concept of "syndemics" as one example of how a human rights approach can transform the way we do anthropology for the betterment of health among the most vulnerable.