Health Beliefs and Practices in an Isolated Polygamist Community of Southern Utah

Abstract

Short Creek is a largely closed and isolated community on the border between Utah and Arizona, made up of the sister towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona. Beginning from childhood, the 6,000 or so members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) are brought up in a lifestyle of plural marriage, meaning a marriage among one man and more than one woman, and are surrounded by their peers in “the covenant.” A lifestyle of plural marriage is likely to affect the health of community members, but its effects have not been studied because of the community’s isolation and distrust of outsiders. This paper addresses several questions that arise in contemplating the health of the Short Creek community: What are the health beliefs in this community, and what are their historical bases? Where do families seek medical care, and for what or at what threshold of illness or injury? What is the attitude of care providers serving this community, and how are the providers viewed by the community? More broadly, this paper examines the ways in which polygamy configures health. In order to meet this objective, this paper aims first to provide a brief account of this community’s history and demographic profile, followed by a discussion of health care in this community and how it is affected by the practice of plural marriage, with the data comprised of qualitative interviews with health care providers to the community. The goals of this project are to gain a rich, historically nuanced understanding of the health of community members, and to identify directions for further academic and policy research. Our findings indicate that health in this community is shaped by limited resources, an attitude of health fatalism, and a profound insularity and corresponding isolation from the outside world.