Syndemics in Symbiotic Cities: Pathogenic Policy and the Production of Health Inequity Across Borders

Public health in border regions is a central concern to researchers and policymakers. This article demonstrates how and why syndemics theory should be central to border health research agendas and the development of health policy. A syndemic describes the concentration and deleterious interaction of two or more health conditions in a population. However, syndemic theory is not only about disease pathology. Another central tenant of syndemic theory is that the sociopolitical and environmental context facilitates the interaction of multiple health conditions. Within the social sciences and public health, a syndemics approach has become an increasingly utilized framework for understanding health disparities. However, how this framework can be adapted to understand the particularities of border regions remains underdeveloped. In applying syndemics to border regions, this paper explores how border-related policies produce conditions that facilitate syndemic vulnerability. In doing so, this article focuses on four policy realms as they unfold on the US-Mexico border: immigration policy, the War on Drugs, environmental policy, and health policy. The construction of policies within these realms often ignores the ways policies produced in one nation generate health consequences beyond national boundaries.