Democrat State Officials Want Faith Leaders To Convince Religious Groups To Get Vaccinated 

The Pennsylvania Department of Health wants faith leaders to help convince the Amish to get vaccinated.

The state’s newly formed Vaccine Education Workgroup wants to strengthen partnerships between faith leaders and public health professionals as a strategy to convince the Amish to get vaccinated. Lancaster County, PA, is home to the largest Amish population in the United States and is known for having vaccination rates lower than the general population. 

“In Amish communities, trusted local faith leaders were identified as potential messengers, though not always easily engaged,” state meeting minutes from the Vaccine Education Workgroup. “Partnerships built during the COVID-19 response — between public health professionals, community leaders, and faith-based organizations — should be maintained and strengthened rather than allowed to fade as emergency funding ends.”

The workgroup, created by Governor Josh Shapiro through an October 2025 executive order, is led by Secretary of Health Dr. Debra Bogen and comprises Shapiro’s deputy chief of staff, doctors, and local public health leaders. Its top priorities in achieving the goal of increased vaccine uptake include creating vaccine safety messaging, countering misinformation from the federal government, and building community trust, public records show. The vaccine workgroup discussed how faith leaders can play an important role in getting people vaccinated.

“Faith leaders, particularly pastors and leaders of congregations, were cited as powerful influences on vaccination behavior. During COVID-19, some congregations tracked vaccination numbers and saw them rise in response to faith leader advocacy,” state the meeting minutes. “Faith-based organizations and community groups are crucial partners in sharing accurate vaccine information and hosting vaccination events.”

A screenshot of minutes from a Vaccine Education Workgroup meeting.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health told The Daily Wire it’s offered more than 230 community pop-up vaccine clinics and has “worked side-by-side with local faith and health care leaders to earn the trust of thousands of Pennsylvanians” and administered more than 6,700 MMR doses since late April at these clinics.

“The Pennsylvania Department of Health is meeting people where they are, answering their questions, and empowering them with the information they need to make informed decisions as part of this ongoing measles outbreak,” Neil Ruhland, Pennsylvania Department of Health spokesperson, told The Daily Wire. “That work is real and vital, accomplished through trust and understanding — not fear mongering or pressuring anyone to go against their own beliefs. Our staff lead with fact-based, science-backed evidence and always allow Pennsylvanians to decide what works best for themselves and their families.”

“Conversations with vaccine-hesitant patients were described as more difficult and emotionally taxing,” state the meeting minutes. “Recurring concerns included provider worry about reimbursement and policy changes, misinformation spread through online channels, softening of recommendations due to anticipated conflict, and declining trust in influenza, COVID-19, and Hepatitis B vaccines.”

 The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends giving all infants a Hepatitis B vaccine within 24 hours of birth.  The workgroup identified uptake of the Hepatitis B vaccine “as especially challenging.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted to recommend parents use individual-based decision-making when deciding to give their infant a Hepatitis B vaccine at birth, if the mother had tested negative for the virus, at its December 2025 meeting. Bogen said this action created “confusion among families, providers, and the media” at the December 2025 workgroup meeting and that evidence “clearly supports benefits of birth dose the US,” documents show. 

The workgroup strongly emphasized a need for unified vaccine messaging and suggested new clinicians receive coaching so “they can communicate clearly and confidently during vaccine discussions.” The group discussed that sick visits could be “opportunities to assess and update vaccination status” and encouraged the state to “reinforce vaccination as a social norm.”

“Participants discussed social norm messaging coming from clinicians, specialists, community ambassadors, faith-based organizations, pastors and other trusted faith leaders,” state the meeting minutes. “Suggested channels for positive vaccine messaging included office posters and clinic materials, buses, newspapers, radio, video game advertising for younger audiences whose parents also engage in gaming.”

When asked if they could “fix one issue tomorrow, what would it be?” the group listed several ideas, including “normalizing vaccination as a social expectation, and reducing confusion around payment.”

A screenshot from a presentation given at a Vaccine Education Workgroup meeting.

The PA DOH said religious and philosophical exemptions began increasing in Pennsylvania around the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and “have nearly doubled since that point and continue to increase each year,” records show.

 A current outbreak of measles within the Pennsylvania Amish community has local lawmakers calling for an end to religious vaccine exemptions. Democrat Senator Amanda Cappelletti published a co-sponsorship memo on September 8, 2026, announcing legislation that would eliminate religious vaccine exemptions.

Senator Cappelletti did not respond to The Daily Wire’s request for comment.

Several states have removed religious vaccine school exemptions for students, including New York, which passed legislation in June 2019. Three Amish schools have been fighting to regain religious vaccine exemptions since 2022. After suffering legal losses at district court and federal appeals court, the Amish petitioners filed a cert petition asking the Supreme Court to review their case in September 2026, according to First Liberty Institute. 

“New York here imposed existential penalties on Old Order Amish schools for failing to require vaccines that would violate their faith,” states the petition. “The Amish have long been a litmus test for our Nation’s continued commitment to religious liberty. If the Second Circuit’s opinion is allowed to stand, we are failing that test. The message would be clear: we no longer tolerate the Amish faith.”

The Daily Wire asked Governor Shapiro if he would support legislation to remove philosophical and religious vaccine exemptions but he did not respond to The Daily Wire’s requests for comment. 

As Pennsylvania Attorney General, Shapiro filed a lawsuit in 2017 that aimed to strip the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic order of nuns serving the elderly poor, of a religious exemption that excluded them from having to provide abortifacients in violation of their religious conscience.

Shapiro instructed Pennsylvania health officials not to follow vaccine recommendations from the federal government in an executive order on protecting vaccination, signed during an October 2025 press conference at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Shapiro accuses Secretary Kennedy and the Trump administration of sowing “confusion and chaos around vaccines” in the EO and directs state agencies to follow vaccine advice from the AAP instead of recommendations from the “politically influenced” ACIP committee. 

Shapiro said more than half of all vaccines administered in the United States are produced in Pennsylvania and called vaccine production “big business,” during the October 2025 press conference.  

“Vaccine production is responsible for 4,700 jobs of our fellow Pennsylvanians and generates 4.74 billion dollars for our economy,” Shapiro said during the press conference. “It’s also big business for us here in this Commonwealth. Our health, our safety, and our economy all depend on people having access to vaccines. And sadly, RFK Jr. and the president want to try and take that away from us.”

Shapiro and Kennedy faced off in August 2026 after Shapiro’s controversial announcement of two “measles-associated deaths” amongst the “unvaccinated” in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The governor laid blame on the Trump administration for the deaths and said he was “very, very blunt” with Secretary Kennedy on a phone call before the announcement.

“I made very clear that his actions and the rhetoric that’s coming from this administration are having a negative impact on communities across America,” Shapiro stated during the press conference. “There’s real life consequences to spreading misinformation.”

Kennedy fired back at Shapiro on X, claiming the governor acknowledged during their call that Pennsylvania’s vaccination rates fell during the Biden administration.

“Governor Shapiro also faulted me for the decline in Pennsylvania vaccination rates from 97% – 93.2%. When I pushed back on this assertion, he acknowledged that most of the decline occurred during the Biden administration,” Kennedy wrote.

The October 2025 vaccine EO called for state regulations to be updated to be consistent with “evidence-based recommendations made by the nation’s leading medical associations” and mandated the creation of the Vaccine Education Workgroup. 

A regulatory proposal from the PA DOH announced in August 2026 required healthcare providers to input every delivered vaccination, unless the patient proactively declined in writing, and created a statewide vaccine database. The regulatory changes gave state officials the power to exclude K-12 and college students from receiving an in-person education if they were deemed “susceptible” to a disease. Bogen said the proposed regulation changes fulfilled Shapiro’s EO mandate, during that April Vaccine Education Workgroup meeting, documents show. The proposal was withdrawn after widespread public backlash but the PA DOH promised it would be resubmitted at a later date.  

The Shapiro administration published an online database with detailed information about the vaccination rates of kindergarten, seventh grade, and 12th grade students throughout Pennsylvania and included the rates of religious and philosophical exemptions at each school.