The climate change–infectious disease nexus: is it time for climate change syndemics?

Heffernan, C. (2013) The climate change–infectious disease nexus: is it time for climate change syndemics? Animal Health Research Reviews, 14 (2). pp. 151-154. ISSN 1475-2654 doi: 10.1017/S1466252313000133

Abstract/Summary

Conceptualizing climate as a distinct variable limits our understanding of the synergies and interactions between climate change and the range of abiotic and biotic factors, which influence animal health. Frameworks such as eco-epidemiology and the epi-systems approach, while more holistic, view climate and climate change as one of many discreet drivers of disease. Here, I argue for a new paradigmatic framework: climate-change syndemics. Climate-change syndemics begins from the assumption that climate change is one of many potential influences on infectious disease processes, but crucially is unlikely to act independently or in isolation; and as such, it is the inter-relationship between factors that take primacy in explorations of infectious disease and climate change. Equally importantly, as climate change will impact a wide range of diseases, the frame of analysis is at the collective rather than individual level (for both human and animal infectious disease) across populations.