Hans Baer teaches in the Development Studies Program and Centre for Health and Society at the University of Melbourne. He is author, co-author, or co-editor of twelve books, including Introducing Medical Anthropology: A Discipline in Action (with Merrill Singer, AltaMira Press 2007), Toward an Integrative Medicine: Merging Alternative Therapies with Biomedicine (AltaMira Press 2004), and Medical Anthropology and the World System (with Merrill Singer and Ida Susser, Praeger, 2d Edn. 2003). He has also authored some 140 book chapters and journal articles, and was awarded the Rudolf Virchow Prize by the Critical Anthropology of Health division of the Society for Medical Anthropology. Merill Singer, who originated the concept of syndemics in the public health literature, is a senior research scientist at the Center for Health Intervention, and Prevention at the University of Connecticut, and also affiliated with the university's Department of Anthropology, Center for the Elimination of Health Disparities among Latinos, and Center for Health Communication on Marketing, and with Yale University's Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS. He has published over 190 articles and chapters in health and social science journals and books and has authored or edited 20 books. Among his honors are the George Foster Memorial Award in Practicing Anthropology from the Society for Medical Anthropology and the Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study from the North America from the Society for the Anthropology of North America.