Abstract

This Senior Independent Study, Immunology and Ideology: Navigating Religious Autonomy and Vaccine Science for Better Public Health Outcomes, analyzes measles outbreaks in the United States as an intersection between biomedical science and religious moral reasoning. Measles is one of the most well-known and preventable infectious diseases. Vaccination effectively controls it, but about 95% of the population needs to be immune to stop the spread. Recent outbreaks in religious communities show that there is still a gap between scientific effectiveness and social uptake.

This project argues that vaccine resistance and hesitancy in certain religious communities should not be considered simply as ignorance or a rejection of scientific evidence. Instead it shows how community authority, religious autonomy, institutional trust, and legal exemption frameworks collectively shape structured moral reasoning. The study uses an interdisciplinary approach integrating immunology, epidemiology, religious studies, public health ethics, and legal analysis. It implements a qualitative comparative case study methodology to analyze measles outbreaks in religious communities in the United States from 1979 to 2023. The main idea behind this analysis is ethical translation, defined as the process of making sure that the goals of public health are in line with the moral values and beliefs of religious groups. Ethical translation prioritizes trust-based engagement and the application of internal community frameworks such as stewardship, protecting the vulnerable, and collective responsibility to increase vaccination rates; rather than relying solely on coercive policy or scientific authority.

The study is driven by three principal research questions: First the influence of religious moral frameworks on vaccine decision making, second, the role of exemption policies and social clustering within religious communities in creating localized immunological vulnerability, and lastly the conditions under which public health institutions can effectively collaborate with religious communities without compromising autonomy. The project looks at how changes in social structure, authority, and policy affect the way measles outbreaks spread. It treats measles as a "biological constant."

This study claims that measles outbreaks are not merely indicative of deficiencies in medical knowledge but are in fact structural manifestations of conflict between competing systems of authority and responsibility, namely medicine as well as religion. It concludes that sustainable public health outcomes depend on more than just new biomedical discoveries. They also depend on how well scientific knowledge is incorporated into different moral and religious frameworks.

Advisor

Reeder, Terry

Department

Religious Studies

Disciplines

Analytical, Diagnostic and Therapeutic Techniques and Equipment | Bacterial Infections and Mycoses | Bioethics and Medical Ethics | Biology | Cell and Developmental Biology | Communication | Education | Genetics and Genomics | Geography | Health and Medical Administration | Health Communication | Health Information Technology | Immunology and Infectious Disease | Immunology of Infectious Disease | Immunotherapy | Medical Education | Other Immunology and Infectious Disease | Social Influence and Political Communication | Virus Diseases

Keywords

measles, vaccine hesitancy, religious autonomy, public health ethics, immunology, herd immunity, exemption policy, trust, ethical translation, religion and health

Publication Date

2026

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

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© Copyright 2026 Paul J.G. Ehenger