{"id":474889,"date":"2026-06-03T23:09:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T23:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/474889\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T23:09:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T23:09:15","slug":"why-public-health-should-pay-close-attention-to-the-amish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/474889\/","title":{"rendered":"Why public health should pay close attention to the Amish"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back in September, at what would prove to be an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2025\/09\/22\/trump-autism-action-plan-tylenol-link-leucovorin-treatment\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">infamous press conference<\/a>, President Trump repeated a claim popular among vaccine critics: Autism \u201cdoesn\u2019t exist with the Amish community, and they don\u2019t take all of this junk,\u201d he said, referring to vaccines.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s not true, according to Braxton Mitchell, a professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and Cory Anderson, who is a postdoctoral researcher in population health and demography at Pennsylvania State University\u2019s Population Research Institute. Both have studied the Amish and public health \u2014 and, they say, vaccination and autism are not the only interesting and important topics here.<\/p>\n<p>Far from being a dying way of life, as many people think, the Amish population is growing rapidly \u2014 doubling roughly every 20 years. \u201cSo public health is going to have to talk about the Amish more and more, especially if their health profiles are going to continue to differ from non-Amish populations,\u201d said Anderson.<\/p>\n<p>That means discussing communicable diseases \u2014 like many populations, the Amish, many of whom do vaccinate, have been increasingly hesitant since the Covid-19 pandemic \u2014 as well as genetic and other conditions. \u201cWe can learn an awful lot about some of the common conditions that the population suffers from [by] looking at groups with different lifestyles, because we know lifestyles are really important for heart disease risk, diabetes risk, hypertension, etc.,\u201d said Mitchell.<\/p>\n<p>Listen to hear more about the Amish approach to the medical system, vaccines, paying for care, and much more.<\/p>\n<p>Be sure to sign up for the weekly \u201cFirst Opinion Podcast\u201d on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/first-opinion-podcast\/id1550788298\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Apple Podcasts<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/3y7p5nBy5fRV5ixzDRf1HC?si=17cf5dc3f94547e6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Spotify<\/a>, or wherever you get your podcasts. Get alerts about each new episode by signing up for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2026\/06\/03\/amish-public-health-vaccines-autism-first-opinion-podcast\/file:\/\/bgfilesrv\/stat\/TBosch\/Podcast\/statnews.com\/signup\/first-opinion-podcast\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">\u201cFirst Opinion Podcast\u201d newsletter<\/a>. And don\u2019t forget to sign up for the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/signup\/first-opinion\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">First Opinion newsletter<\/a>, delivered every Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in September, at what would prove to be an infamous press conference, President Trump repeated a claim&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163,521,85,46,546,1360,9804],"class_list":["post-474889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-public-health","tag-research","tag-vaccines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}