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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2013

Claire Heffernan
Claire Heffernan*
Affiliation:
Livestock Development Group, School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6AL, UK
*
E-mail: c.l.heffernan@reading.ac.uk
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Abstract

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.

Keywords

climate change and infectious diseaseanimal healthsyndemicseco-epidemiologyepi-systemsclimate-change syndemics
Type
Review Article
Information
Animal Health Research Reviews , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , December 2013 , pp. 151 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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