HILLDALE, Utah — Few people here talk about vaccinations. Not to outsiders anyway.
By and large, the people who live in Hildale and neighboring Colorado City, just across the Arizona border, are extremely private. High walls surround many houses to avoid prying eyes from strangers.
Anyway, measles came in.
As of Friday, 161 cases had been confirmed in Utah and Arizona, most of them concentrated in the Twin Cities, collectively known as Short Creek, along the border. Eleven people were hospitalized, including eight in Utah and three in Arizona.
It is now the second largest measles outbreak in the United States this year. It follows a measles outbreak that spread from West Texas to New Mexico, infecting at least 862 people and killing three. Two were young girls.
Immunization rates have fallen sharply in both outbreak regions in recent years, and on the outside, the two regions are similar. Both incidents occurred in communities skeptical of government intervention and mainstream medicine. And both events had a profound impact on people with strong ties to religious sects: the Mennonites of West Texas and (mostly former) members of the fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) in Short Creek.
But the Short Creek community is also grappling with its more recent past, including polygamy, child removal and a cult leader currently imprisoned for sexual assault of minors.
“We’ve been through so much trauma,” said Donia Jessop, Hildale’s mayor and former FLDS member. “Vaccinating children or giving them booster shots wasn’t the first thing on our minds.”
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints outlawed polygamy more than 100 years ago. However, some members continued to believe that multiple wives benefited men in the afterlife and broke away to become the FLDS. One of the places the members settled was Short Creek.
Jessop remembers growing up in a tight-knit community in the 1970s and 80s with her two mothers and numerous brothers, sisters and cousins who were her closest friends.
“I had an ideal childhood,” she said. “We grew up like a village, so we were guaranteed a spanking or a meal from any mother in the village.”
But polygamy was and remains illegal. This practice prompted two federal raids at Short Creek, in 1953 and 2008. Both times, government officials temporarily forcibly took children from their families to determine if they were being abused or neglected.
The children returned, but the trauma persisted. “It made a lot of FLDS kids very scared of the police,” said Gloria Steed, who was 14 at the time of the 2008 raid. “After that we were extremely reluctant to be told what to do.”
Steed said her mother was born during the raids in 1953 and grew up with anti-vaccination tendencies along with anti-government tendencies. “It had a huge impact on her faith and trust in the system,” said Steed, who was not vaccinated as a child.
But there were no specific religious injunctions prohibiting shooting, Jessop said. She was vaccinated as a child. (None of the major religions explicitly oppose vaccination.)
Jessop and other former FLDS members said things changed in 2002. That very year, now-imprisoned cult leader Warren Jeffs became their prophet. FLDS prophets are considered the direct voice of God. He often has dozens of wives.
Jeffs’ 65th wife, Brielle Decker, revealed that he had spread the lies. About vaccination.
“Vaccines are bad and they have substances in them that make it impossible to have children,” said Decker, who left the FLDS lifestyle. Decker and other former members said fertility and the ability to produce large numbers of babies was vital to sustaining the community.
Jeffs exercised more control over the Short Creek community than previous prophets, a former FLDS member said. They took away ownership of land and homes, even reassigning wives and children to different husbands and fathers, breaking up families and depriving them of the ability to contact one another, they said.
Jessop, who was not mayor when Jeffs was a prophet, also said that Jeffs: limited access Before shutting down the health care system entirely, he visited the town’s medical clinic for people he deemed unworthy.
Jeffs was on the FBI’s most wanted list before his arrest in 2006. He is serving life in prison for sexually assaulting minors in the FLDS community.
The scars from the Jeffs era at Short Creek run deep. The region had to work to re-establish the basics: running water, schools, and a health care system including regular health checks.
Because there is so much to reorganize, making sure children are vaccinated has been high on the priority list, Jessop said.
Short Creek has two medical clinics, but businesses promoting natural and herbal remedies have emerged as popular advocates for health care.
A store employee at Paty’s Place, a popular health food store in the area, said some people had come in seeking advice on treating measles. The store’s owner, Paty LeBaron, did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment. Post written on Facebook She has never “claimed to know how to treat measles” and encouraged people to “seek trustworthy, science-based medical advice from a qualified health professional regarding measles or any other serious health condition.”
A similar phenomenon occurred in West Texas. In Seminole City, parents of children with measles flocked to Health 2 U for cod liver oil, an unproven treatment touted by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“The COVID pandemic has made it more difficult to get routine health care services up and running again,” said Aaron Hunt, a public health specialist with Utah State University Extension.
“Parents are trying to do what they think is best for their children, but since COVID-19 they have been exposed to a lot of misinformation,” Hunt said.
This leaves moms and dads fearful of even rare side effects of the vaccine, said Hunt, who works with health care providers across Utah to help combat vaccine misinformation. (Decreasing vaccination rates didn’t just open the door to measles. whooping cough It is spreading nationwide.)
“We want to have honest conversations with people and empower them to make their own decisions for themselves and their families,” Hunt said.
But now that measles is spreading through the Short Creek community, people appear to be accepting of the vaccine. Hildale mayor Jessop said vaccinations had “increased dramatically” since the outbreak began.
David Heaton, spokesman for the Southwest Utah Department of Public Health, said the number of vaccinations in the region increased 14% between July and September of this year compared to the same period in 2024.
However, a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Health Services said current MMR vaccination rates are similar to 2024 rates.
The spread of the virus is not contained in the Short Creek area. In the past few weeks, cases of measles exposure have also been reported in the Utah towns of St. George and Hurricane. On Wednesday Salt Lake County Public Health Officials said there was a possible case, but could not confirm it because the person in question refused to be tested.
Becky Goimarac lives in St. Mary’s, about 45 miles from Hildale. I live in George. Her teenage son was exposed to the virus last August at a high school cycling event in Park City, Utah. This was the first sign of a measles outbreak in the state.
“I personally wasn’t worried because my children were vaccinated,” Goimarac said. “It was even sadder that we had to worry about that.”
Steed, a former FLDS member now 31, remembers suffering from whooping cough and chickenpox as a child. But she still has reservations about shots to prevent such diseases.
“I don’t trust the system,” Steed said. “I think doctors are pushing too many vaccines too quickly.” that Centers for Disease Control and Preventionwith American Academy of Pediatricsclaims to have scrutinized childhood vaccine schedules to ensure they provide the strongest protection with the fewest doses.
Still, Steed allowed her 9-year-old son, Jhonde, to get a few shots, which she considered most important, so he wouldn’t suffer like she did. “When I was younger, I thought I was doing my son a favor to get whatever he got,” she said. In addition to the chickenpox and whooping cough vaccines, Jhonde received a single dose of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine as a baby. Two doses are recommended for 97% protection.
When a measles outbreak broke out in Short Creek in late summer, Steed received an MMR shot because she was on a journey to become a surrogate mother. Measles during pregnancy is a strong risk factor for miscarriage or premature birth. Jhonde received his second MMR shot the same day, thanks to his trust in local doctors and nurses who grew up in Short Creek, Steed said.
Steed has seen the benefits of the MMR vaccine first-hand as outbreaks have increased in her community.
“The vaccine is working. It was a blessing to see that,” she said.
“It’s important for doctors and nurses to be willing to listen to patients’ individual experiences instead of always putting pressure on them because they think they’re better or smarter,” Steed said. “The medical field can be a bit like a cult.”
