Merrill Singer
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Merrill Singer is a medical anthropologist with a dual appointment in the Department of Anthropology and the Center for Health, Intervention and Prevention, University of Connecticut. He is best known for his research on substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, health disparities, and minority health. As Director of the Center for Community Health Research at the Hispanic Health Council in Hartford, CT, he helped to develop the theoretical perspective within medical anthropology known as critical medical anthropology. Dr. Singer also developed the public health concepts of syndemics and oppression illness.
The first of these terms refers to the clustering of diseases in populations and the biological interaction of diseases in individual bodies. Moreover, the term syndemics also points to the determinant importance of social conditions in disease concentrations, interactions, and health consequences. In syndemics, the interaction of diseases or other adverse health conditions commonly arises because of adverse social conditions (e.g., poverty, exploitative, stigmatization, oppressive social relationships) that put socially devalued groups at heightened risk. The term oppression illness refers to the internalization of social discrimination and the health consequences of coming to accept one does not deserve to be healthy.
Additionally, he is co-editor with Pamela Erickson of the book series 'Advances in Critical Medical Anthropology with Left Coast Press. In addition to his work at the University of Connecticut, Dr. Singer is affiliated with the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA) at Yale University.
Dr. Singer was selected as the first recipient of the Practicing Anthropology Award by the Society for Medical Anthropology in 2004 and received a Career Recognition Award from the Society for the Anthropology of North America in 2005. Previously he was awarded both the AIDS and Anthropology Paper Prize and the Rudoph Virchow Award through the Society for Medical Anthropology.
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[edit] Research
Dr. Singer has been the Principal Investigator on a continuous series of federal and foundation funded drinking, drug use, and AIDS prevention grants since 1984, and currently is the Principal Investigator on a CDC-funded study designed to monitor emergent drug use trends and to build community health responses to identified public health risk. Additionally, he is Co-investigator on four studies:
- Sexual communication and risk among inner city young adults (CDC)
- Assessing the implementation of oral HIV testing among injection drug users in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil (NIDA)
- Ethical issues in research with active drug users (NIDA)
- Evaluation of the Work and Learn Model in Connecticut (DCF)
[edit] Family
Dr. Singer is the father of two children, Jacob Hillis Singer and Elyse Ona Singer; both are in college.
[edit] Publications
Dr. Singer has published over 160 scholarly articles and over 50 book chapters.
His books include:
- Merrill Singer, Lani Davison and Fuat Yalin (Eds.) Alcohol Use and Abuse Among Hispanic Adolescents. Hartford, CT: Hispanic Health Council, 1987.
- Hans Baer and Merrill Singer. African American Religion in the Twentieth Century: Diversity in Protest and Accommodation. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1992
- Ralph Bolton and Merrill Singer (Eds.) Rethinking AIDS Prevention: Cultural Approaches. New York: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1992.
- Merrill Singer and Hans Baer Critical Medical Anthropology. Amiytyville, New York: Baywood Publishing Co., 1995.
- Merrill Singer (Ed.) The Political Economy of AIDS. Amityville, New York: Baywood Publishing Co., 1997.
- Hans Baer, Merrill Singer and Ida Susser. Medical Anthropology and the World System. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Co., 1997.
- Patricia Marshall, Merrill Singer, and Michael Clatts (Eds.) Integrating Cultural, Observational, and Epidemiological Approaches in the Prevention of Drug Abuse and HIV/AIDS. Rockville, MD: National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1999.
- Jean Schensul, M. LeCompte, Robert Trotter, E. Cromley, and Merrill Singer. Mapping Social Networks, Spatial Data and Hidden Populations. Book 4, The Ethnographer's Toolkit. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 1999.
- Margaret LeCompte, Jean Schensul, Margaret Weeks and Merrill Singer. Researcher Roles and Research Partnerships. Books 6, The Ethnographer's Toolkit. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 1999.
- Yun, Wu, Wang Qitian, Cong Rihui, Jianghong Li, Ian Newman, Merrill Singer, Christopher Bates, and Michael Duke (Eds.) New Advancements in Preventive Medicine: Textbook of Continuing Medical Education of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Hohhot, Inner Mongolia: Yuanfang Press, 2002.
- Arachu Castro and Merrill Singer (Eds.) Unhealthy Health Policy: A Critical Anthropological Examination. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 2004.
- Merrill Singer Something Dangerous: Emergent and Changing Illicit Drug Use and Community Health. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2006.
- Merrill Singer (Ed.) New Drugs on the Street: Changing Patterns of Illicit Consumption. New York: Haworth Press, 2005.
- Benjamin P. Bowser, Ernest Quimby and Merrill Singer (Eds.) Communities Assessing Their AIDS Epidemics: Results of the Rapid Assessment of HIV/AIDS in U.S. Cities. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2006.
- Merrill Singer The Face of Social Suffering: Life History of a Street Drug Addict. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2007.
- Merrill Singer and Hans Baer Introducing Medical Anthropology: A Discipine in Action. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2007.
- Merrill Singer and Hans Baer, (Eds.) Killer Commodities: Public Health and the Corporate Production of Harm. AltaMira/Roman Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008.
- Merrill Singer Drugging the Poor: Legal and Illegal Drug Industries and the Structuring of Social Inequality. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2008.
- Merrill Singer Drugs and Development: Global Impact on Sustainable Growth and Human Rights. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2008.
- Hans Baer and Merrill Singer. Global Warming and the Political Ecology of Health: Emerging Crises and Systemic Solutions. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2009.
- Merrill Singer. Introduction to Syndemics: A Systems Approach to Public and Community Health. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2009.
- Merrill Singer and Pamela Erickson, (Eds.) The Companion to Medical Anthropology. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
