Introduction to Syndemics: A Critical Systems Approach to Public and Community Health

Merrill Singer, a cultural and medical anthropologist who earned his PhD degree from the University of Utah, holds a dual appointment as senior research scientist at the Center for Health, Intervention, and Prevention and professor of anthropology at the University of Connecticut. Additionally, he is affi liated with the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA) at Yale University. He has authored, coauthored, or edited twenty books and over two hundred articles and book chapters on health and social issues. Active in the building of social science of health theory, the development of methods in qualitative health research, and the use of research in the development of community - based health promotion and intervention, he has been the recipient of the Rudolph Virchow Award from the Critical Anthropology of Health Caucus of the Society for Medical Anthropology, the George Foster Practicing Medical Anthropology Award from the Society for Medical Anthropology, the AIDS and Anthropology Prize Paper award from the AIDS and Anthropology Research Group, and the Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study of North America from the Society for the Anthropology of North America. Since 1984 he has been the principal investigator on a continuous series of basic and applied federally funded health studies, and he has carried out health research in the United States, Brazil, China, and Haiti.