Preparing for emerging infections means expecting new syndemics

摘要

When several sources of morbidity come together to produce interlinked and worse health outcomes, they are sometimes called a syndemic. Research on syndemics explores how two or more diseases cluster together; how social, political, economic, and ecological factors drive those clusters; and how clustered conditions interact via biological, psychological, or social pathways.1 Syndemic interventions target underlying patterns of multidirectional causality to achieve better overall health in susceptible and often dispossessed populations.