Vaccines
&
Religion
Vaccines
&
Religion
WHO did we interview?
We performed 6 semi-structured interviews with different people across the United States who identify with different religions (Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Quaker, Mormon, etc.). While these interviewees have been extremely helpful in allowing us to understand the intersection of religion and vaccine opinions, we understand that they do not represent the viewpoint of everyone who identifies with their religion. All of the interviewee's names have been changed to protect their privacy.
WHO are we?
Hi! We are Erica, Leanna, Marie-Claire, and Riddhi, students at the University of Connecticut in ANTH 3300: Medical Anthropology.
WHAT is it all about?
We all have an interest in the intersection between religion and vaccines, so we decided to put our brains together to discover what real people think about vaccines within the context of their religion. Our hypothesis was that religion would have a large impact on people's personal opinions about vaccines. To discover if this hypothesis was true, we interviewed several individuals across the country who identified with different religions and researched different anthropological and biological sources. To discover what we found, take a look through our website!
WHY is it relevant?
As you will see from the research that was conducted by our team, within the context of religion, there are not many people who disagree about the efficacy of vaccines. However, there are still issues with people not vaccinating themselves or their dependents. Having a large population that is unvaccinated can cause unintentional national epidemics and risk the health of people who are immunocompromised.
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More and more people today are urging politicians to rethink religious exemptions for vaccinations in school systems. Currently, there are only three states that don't allow religious exemptions for unvaccinated children in public schools: California, Mississippi, and West Virginia (NCSL 2019).
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However, for those in states where religious exemption is allowed, parents of immunocompromized
children are fighting for their children's rights to go to school. In our own state of Connecticut, there is an ongoing case to create legislative proposals to eliminate religious exemptions. Two mothers with children going through chemotherapy are struggling to find public schools with high enough vaccination rates to create herd immunity to protect their children's lives. One of these mothers has placed her child in a private Catholic school system, where vaccination rates are higher. The plan is to reintroduce the next year, with the backing of Governor Ned Lamont and the Department of Public Health (Megan 2019).
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