on Public and Applied Anthropology

Solon T Kimball Award for Public and Applied Anthropology

Merrill Singer, professor of anthropology at the University of Connecticut, is the 2010 recipient of the Solon T Kimball Award for Public and Applied Anthropology for the policy impact of his work with the Hispanic Health Council (HHC) in Hartford, CT. This biennial award offers an opportunity to honor exemplary anthropologists for outstanding achievements in applied science that have also had important impacts on public policy. One major outcome of Singer's work with HHC is the development of a community-based resource and model for participatory applied research. The roots of the "Hartford Model" is embedded in action anthropology, as developed initially by Sol Tax at the University of Chicago, and associated also with Allan Holmberg's Vicos Project. The goal realized by HHC combined public health research-both' ethnographic and epidemiological-with community-based services, training and advocacy. Working in collaboration with colleagues who represent multiple disciplines at the HHC and beyond, Singer has developed a Significant body of work that has contributed to the development of culturally and- socially informed frameworks and programs for HIV/AIDS prevention and intervention, hepatitis prevention and drug abuse prevention and treatment.

A prolific researcher, Singer's work has contributed an approach and a concept that are now part of the health literature; The first is critical
medical anthropology (CMA). CMA emphasizes the interplay of structural factors, culture, biology and the environment, constituting webs of causation that impact human health. This has lead to his widely cited contributions to syringeexchange programming-an entry point into causal webs-that has been recognized as significantly
contributing to a reduction in new HIV /AIDS infection among injection drug users, and to an increase in positive behavioral changes of injection drug users. Through CMA, Singer has infused the ethnographic approach into epidemiological research just as much as he has. relied on his epidemiological 'Colleagues and research to inform emerging cultural patterns. This combination routinely invites interdisciplinary partiCipation, collaboration and leadership.

Singer's contributions illustrate that the triangulation of perspectives from different fields not only enhances research reliability but also has provided ways to intervene into causal webs that are often hidden in biomedical approaches to disease and prevention. Singer's second major contribution, with co-author Scott Clair, is the concept of
"syndemics:' Syndemics is defined as two or more epidemics interacting synergistically under a given set of social conditions to increase the health burden of a population. This is a prevention concept now promoted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Singer first used the syndemics framework to study the complex relationships between substance abuse, violence and AIDS.

Anthropology News by AAA, vol.51, No.7, October 2010