Free surgical treatment substantially improved the health and social life for most of the study participants. This study highlights how structural barriers prevent women living in a resource-constrained setting from receiving health care for a highly prevalent and readily treatable maternal morbidity such as pelvic organ prolapse. Conclusions: Moreover, CMA addresses the social origins of illness, such as the way in which poverty, discrimination, industrial pollution of the environment, social violence, and fear of violence contribute to poor health. Finally, farm owners compelled their Latino employees to work through their injuries without treatment. Do the social sciences, particularly anthropology, possess the theoretical equipment necessary to understand Latin American problems and to propose effective solutions for them? Background: This is a reflection, without doubt, of a growing demand from large sectors of the population to achieve a rapid and complete satisfaction of their established needs, as well as of the new ones which arise from contact with forms of modern urban life. It puts emphasis on the structure of social relationships, rather than purely biomedical factors … The majority of the women experienced a transformation after prolapse surgery. Its ultimate objectives are: 1) to reduce the mental health burden of civilian populations exposed to protracted and endemic political violence and/or episodic natural disasters; 2) to foster the process of healing, psychosocial rehabilitation and recovery; and 3) to generate improved mental health policies and services in the participating countries. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2009. 277-289 in Handbook of Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine. In other words, people develop their own individual and collective understandings and responses to illness and to other threats to their well-being, but they do so in a world that is not of their own making, a world in which inequality of access to health care, the media, productive resources (e.g., land, potable water, clean air), and valued social statuses play a significant role in their daily options. Three case stories were chosen to illustrate the key findings related to health care seeking among the informants. The diseases in question interact deleteriously and syndemically, contributing to the OVIDD Syndemic in Puerto Rico. Amityville, New York: Baywood Publishing Co., 1995. Arachu Castro and Merrill Singer, Eds. I named this syndemic the OVIDD (Obesity, Violence, political Instability, Diabetes, and Depression) Syndemic. I draw on nearly a year of mixed-methods fieldwork to argue that depression, obesity and diabetes form a syndemic with the violence and political instability that are part and parcel of living in Puerto Rico. This article offers an analysis of these networks as health care systems in general and for the case of Spain and specifically Catalonia, describing the emergence and characteristics of their groups, and the therapeutic itineraries of some participants. Merrill Singer. This paper is an exploration of the meaning of “interpretation” as an analytic concept in clinical ethnography. The Political Economy of AIDS. In-depth interviews were carried out with women at the hospital prior to surgery and in their homes 5-9 months following surgery. https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498552141/Stigma-Syndemics-New-Directions-in-Biosocial-Health