PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Andrew Burns
AU  - Kat Albrecht
TI  - Localized Syndemic Assemblages: COVID-19, Substance Use Disorder, and Overdose Risk in Small-Town America
AID  - 10.7758/RSF.2022.8.8.11
DP  - 2022 Dec 01
TA  - RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
PG  - 245--262
VI  - 8
IP  - 8
4099  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/8/8/245.short
4100  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/8/8/245.full
AB  - Pandemics do not exist in isolation and COVID-19 is no exception. We argue that existing health crises, notably substance use disorder (SUD), developed syndemic relationships with COVID-19 that produced compounding deleterious effects. Combining Merrill Singer’s theory of syndemics and assemblage theory, we analyze the combinatory impact of overdose and COVID-19 within a localized context. We focus on Sandusky, Ohio, where we combine police reports, in-depth interviews with area residents, and ethnographic data to compare conditions before and after the emergence of COVID-19. We find dramatic shifts in relevant local contexts due to COVID-19, inhibiting existing systems of law and public policy aimed at overdose prevention and SUD treatment. Further, our findings provide evidence of complications in the COVID-19 response originating from the overdose epidemic.