Central to this volume, and critical to its unique creative significance and contribution, is the conceptual unification of syndemics and stigma. Syndemics theory is increasingly recognized in social science and medicine as a crucial framework for examining and addressing pathways of interaction between biological and social aspects of chronic and acute suffering in populations. While much research to date addresses known syndemics such as those involving HIV, diabetes, and mental illness, this book explores new directions just beginning to emerge in syndemics research – revealing what syndemics theory can illuminate about, for example the health consequences of socially pathologized pregnancy or infertility, when stigmatization of reproductive options or experiences affect women’s health. In other chapters, newly identified syndemics affecting incarcerated or detained individuals are highlighted, demonstrating the physical, psychological, structural, and political-economic effects of stigmatizing legal frameworks on human health, through a syndemic lens. Elsewhere in the volume, scholars examine the stigma of poverty and how it affects both nutritional and oral health. The common thread across all chapters is linkages of social stigmatization, structural conditions, and how these societal forces drive biological and disease interactions affecting human health, in areas not previously explored through these lenses.

The chapters in Foundations of Biosocial Health: Stigma and Illness Interactions, drawn primarily from medical anthropology, highlight the diverse ways in which various stigmatized health conditions interact with social inequalities and stigma to form syndemics. The authors delineate multiple examples of stigma-driven syndemics to demonstrate both the nature of disease interactions and how stigma contributes to, promotes, exacerbates, or perpetuates a syndemic. In so doing, the authors also address how stigma translates from a social condition to various biological conditions. The authors’ contributions cover a variety of topics, including HIV, substance use, obesity, depression, homelessness, poverty,and political oppression. This book is recommended for scholars of anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science, and public health.

This book focuses on syndemics in the Global South and uses COVID‐19 as a window to understand clusters of disparities and disease comorbidities. The pandemic has exposed and multiplied structural inequalities and certain subpopulations were more exposed to COVID‐19 as well as experienced greater morbidity and mortality. The effects of the pandemic differ between countries but have had an especially major impact, although in varying ways, in the Global South. The contributions in this volume explore the differential impacts of COVID‐19 at individual, community, national, or regional levels, considering how structural violence is institutionalized in a way that creates vulnerable situations and disproportionate suffering. The book will be of interest to anthropologists and sociologists as well as to those working in global and public health.

The fully revised new edition of the defining reference work in the field of medical anthropology A Companion to Medical Anthropology, Second Edition provides the most complete account of the key issues and debates in this dynamic, rapidly growing field. Bringing together contributions by leading international authorities in medical anthropology, this comprehensive reference work presents critical assessments and interpretations of a wide range of topical themes, including global and environmental health, political violence and war, poverty, malnutrition, substance abuse, reproductive health, and infectious diseases. Throughout the text, readers explore the global, historical, and political factors that continue to influence how health and illness are experienced and understood. The second edition is fully updated to reflect current controversies and significant new developments in the anthropology of health and related fields. More than twenty new and revised articles address research areas including war and health, illicit drug abuse, climate change and health, colonialism and modern biomedicine, activist-led research, syndemics, ethnomedicines, biocommunicability, COVID-19, and many others. Highlighting the impact medical anthropologists have on global health care policy and practice, A Companion to Medical Anthropology, Second Edition: Features specially commissioned articles by medical anthropologists working in communities worldwide Discusses future trends and emerging research areas in the field Describes biocultural approaches to health and illness and research design and methods in applied medical anthropology Addresses topics including chronic diseases, rising levels of inequality, war and health, migration and health, nutritional health, self-medication, and end of life care Part of the acclaimed Wiley Blackwell Companions to Anthropology series, A Companion to Medical Anthropology, Second Edition, remains an indispensable resource for medical anthropologists, as well as an excellent textbook for courses in medical anthropology, ethnomedicine, global health care, and medical policy.

Drawing on the authors' keen observations and decades of fieldwork, Lazy, Crazy, and Disgusting combines a wide array of ethnographic evidence from around the globe to demonstrate conclusively how stigma undermines global health's basic goals to create both health and justice.

Gender, Health, and Society in Contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean takes a multilayered approach to the contemporary peoples of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latinx peoples in the greater diaspora. Central to this edited collection, and critical to its creative significance and contribution, is the conceptual unification of gendered health, the embodiment of identity, societal structures, and social inequality, and the ways in which gender, health, and society intersect daily. By emphasizing the complex ways in which gender and health intersect in Latin America, the contributors to this collection offer a more detailed look at how gender embodies health inequities in these populations and how societal woes impact and constrain gendered bodies in public spheres.

With new chapters on key topics such as mental health, the environment, race, ethnicity and health, and pharmaceuticals, this new edition maintains its multidisciplinary framework and bridges the gap between health policy and the sociology of health. It builds upon the success of the first by encompassing a range of issues, studies, and disciplines. The broad coverage of topics in addition to new chapters present an engagement with contemporary issues, resulting in a valuable teaching aid. This second edition brings together a diverse range of leading international scholars with contributors from Australia, Puerto-Rico, USA, Guatemala, Germany, Sri Lanka, Botswana, UK, South Sudan, Mexico, South Korea, Canada and more. The second edition of this Handbook remains a key resource for undergraduates, post-graduates, and researchers across multidisciplinary backgrounds including: medicine, health and social care, sociology, and anthropology. PART ONE: Culture, Society and Health PART TWO: Lived Experiences PART THREE: Health Care Systems, Access and Use PART FOUR: Health in Environmental and Planetary Context

Endometriosis is not a common word. Some people associate it with difficult patients, pain during sex, and infertility. Others link it to stigma, grief, and not being believed by their doctors. In Healers and Patients Talk, Véronique A. S. Griffith provides insight into interactions between patients and health professionals in the clinical setting. Griffith examines the varied and contested enactments of endometriosis, the multiple ways in which people understand and use the term endometriosis, and the complex pathways to the diagnosis. Endometriosis is a label historically bestowed on white, heterosexual, cisgendered career women. Griffith offers ideas as to how such exclusionary practices developed over time.

The Routledge International Handbook of Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health is the authoritative reference work on important, leading-edge developments in the domains of women’s sexual and reproductive health. The handbook adopts a life-cycle approach to examine key milestones and events in women’s sexual and reproductive health. Contributors drawn from a range of disciplines, including psychology, medicine, nursing and midwifery, sociology, public health, women’s studies, and indigenous studies, explore issues through three main lenses: the biopsychosocial model feminist perspectives international, multidisciplinary perspectives that acknowledge the intersection of identities in women’s lives. The handbook presents an authoritative review of the field, with a focus on state-of-the-art work, encouraging future research and policy development in women’s sexual and reproductive health. Finally, the handbook will inform health care providers about the latest research and clinical developments, including women’s experiences of both normal and abnormal sexual and reproductive functions. Drawing upon international expertise from leading academics and clinicians in the field, this is essential reading for scholars and students interested in women’s reproductive health.

This unique comparative ethnography uses a systematic and nuanced approach to delve into the myriad meanings of being fat within and across different global sites.