HLTC05H3 Lecture Notes - Medicalization, Racialization, Syndemic
Document Summary
Coloring the white plague: a syndemic approach to immigrant tuberculosis in canada. This theoretical article examines the racialization and medicalization of tb in the immigrant population. It uses a syndemic approach to immigrant tb. A syndemic approach unravels social and biological connections which shape the distribution of infections over space and time and is useful in deracializing and de-medicalizing these epidemiologic models. Medical screening and surveillance is an ineffective control policy because the proportion of tb cases attributed to immigrants increased from 18 to 66% between 1970 and 2007. More effective tb control policies require shifting the focus from the individual disease carriers toward social inequities which underlie the problem of immigrant tb in canada. In addition, de-racialization and de-medicalization of the contemporary epidemiological models of infectious diseases entail an in-depth exploration of how the categories of ethnicity, culture, and immigration status are played out in everyday health-related experiences of racialized groups.
