Question
Critically explore the relationship between ‘the syndemics model of health’ and the ‘social determinants of health and illness’. Please indicate clearly where you are positioned in the relationship between these two approaches, illustrating the reasons for how and why at the same time.
The social determinants of health and illness are characterized as the social settings in which individuals grow, live, and work and macro institutional structures that frame the circumstance of everyday life. These macrostructural forces include political systems, economic /social policies, economic organization, and social norms (WHO, 2017). On the other hand, the Syndemics model of health adopts an interdisciplinary biosocial approach, which illuminates how and in what ways intergenerational biological pathways and the synergistic interactions of social, environmental, and biosocial determinants generate and enhance multiple disease/illness clustering within individuals and social groups. The purpose of this paper is to 1. Critically explore the relationship between ‘the Syndemics model of health’ and the ‘social determinants of health and illness’’; and 2. Through using a Syndemics ethnographic example of HIV/AIDS susceptibility in Black and Latino men in New York, indicate where both ethnic groups are positioned in the relationship between these two approaches, illustrating the reasons for how and why at the same time.
As already mentioned, the ‘syndemics model of health’ and ‘the social determinants of health and illness’ are two separate, however, intersecting and affiliated structures that can be used as a dichotomous framework to holistically analyze and examine determinants of health and illness. Essentially, the Syndemics model uniquely explores, measures, and determines how evolutionary micro and macro biosocial determinants promote and reproduce pathogenic diseases and illnesses that operate and cluster within individuals and collective populations. On the other hand, the social determinants of health and illness identify and exclusively examine how micro and macro social factors act as a fundamental vice of social stratification which effectively determines individual and collective levels of health and wellbeing, thus influencing disease and illness experience.
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The Syndemics model of health centers on the interdisciplinary biosocial framework, which theorizes how the biological and sociocultural evolution of human beings produces biosocial factors and inheritance which act in synergistic ways to structure social and cultural environments that govern and enhance the biosocial reproduction of disease and parthenogen interaction in individuals and whole populations, which is passed through generations (Brown, et al, 1998). The syndemics model of health critically explores how micro and macro biosocial and biocultural factors, environments and inheritance interact synergistically to shape and reproduce interdependent, complimentary sequential parthenogens and diseases which encourage and promote the adverse ramifications of illness and disease cooperation (Singer et al, 2017). Syndemics uses both biological and macro sociocultural lenses to investigate how multiple disease and illness parthenogens are transmitted through biosocial inheritance and factors, why they cluster in specific societies and cultures, and the substantial adverse impacts this has on the health of individuals and whole populations.
Unlike syndemics which utilize the biosocial framework to examine disease clustering in populations, the social determinants of health and illness focus on the social model of health. Effectively, the social framework of health examines how contemporary individual socioeconomic determinants such as gender, income, ethnicity, lifestyle factors, poverty, and the class of employment, education, and living environments, combined with economic, political, social, and cultural institutions precisely and discursively determine collective and personal health (Germov & Poole, 2011). According to the AIHW (2012), social determinants are measured on a socio-economic continuum called the social gradient of health, which analyses how individual and collective health, well-being, disease, and illness experience are directly correlated with socioeconomic class and status. The gradient explores how health and disease are determined by social inequality in the distribution of assets such as money, power, social connectedness, and education (Link & Phelan, 1995), demonstrating that individuals who attain higher socioeconomic status attain higher levels of health and wellbeing compared to middle and low socioeconomic income earners (AIHW 2012). Consequently, those in lower socioeconomic positions are burdened with higher rates of morbidity and mortality, compared to individuals who attain higher socioeconomic positions (AIHW, 2012)
As explained, the syndemics model of health and the social determinants of health and illness are two separate, yet intersecting and affiliated conceptual frameworks that individually examine how health and illness are structured through biosocial/cultural inheritance, and contemporary individual and collective social determinants which shape our social world. A study undertaken by (Wilson et al, 2014) uses a Syndemics based approach to investigate the rise in rates and susceptibility to HIV among Latino and Black Males located in New York. In New York, Latino and Black males experience higher susceptibility and rates of AIDS/HIV infection, which is linked to the intergenerational transmission of structural biosocial factors within a socially marginalized context (Wilson, et al 2014). Through this view, the effect of the intergenerational transmission of social subordination and marginalization reinforces structural and symbolic violence which contributes to the contemporary health and social problems among Latino and black men including poverty, intergeneration trauma, incarceration, and substance abuse which contributes to risk-taking behavior leading to high susceptibility to HIV/AIDS (Wilson, et al, 2014). Through this framework, we can locate how the socially subordinated position of Black and Latino men in American society is attributed to biosocial factors/inheritance which structurally reproduces symbolically violent sociocultural environments that intergenerationally redistribute biological parthenogens and disease clustering, thus experiencing poor levels of wealth and wellbeing, thus contributing to illness and disease experience.
In conclusion, the syndemics model of health and the social determinants of health and illness are two separate, yet intersecting and affiliated conceptual frameworks that individually examine how health and illness are distributed and structured within individuals and whole populations. The social determinants of health and illness focus on the social model of health and are measured on the social gradient of health which examines how contemporary determinants such as ethnicity, employment, education, income, and socioeconomic status is directly related to levels of health and wellbeing, as well as disease and illness experience. On the other hand, the Syndemics model of health centers on the interdisciplinary biosocial framework, which theorizes how the biological and sociocultural evolution of human beings produces biosocial factors and inheritance which act in synergistic ways to structure social and cultural environments that govern and enhance the biosocial reproduction of disease. Through this paper, I have 1. Critically explore the relationship between ‘the Syndemics model of health’ and the ‘social determinants of health and illness’’ and 2. Through using a Syndemics ethnographic example of HIV/AIDS susceptibility in Black and Latino men in New York, indicate where both ethnic groups are positioned in the relationship between these two approaches, illustrating the reasons for how and why at the same time
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