In rare move, feds reach out to faith groups for help with measles outbreak

Last March, around the time that Ontario health authorities linked an outbreak of measles to a Mennonite gathering in New Brunswick, Rick Cober Bauman received an email from Canada’s then-chief public health officer Theresa Tam.

Tam, who led Canada’s national health response to COVID-19, was asking the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) for help informing their community about the ongoing measles epidemic. Bauman — a former MCC executive director — had stayed on as the organization’s main point of contact for Ontario’s “plain” Mennonites and Amish: culturally conservative rural Anabaptist communities, known for their modest dress sense and traditional modes of transportation, like horse and buggies.

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“There was a certain content, I guess, in having [the federal government] take faith communities as serious conversation partners,” Bauman said.

Tam’s email, it turned out, was part of a larger effort by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) to confront measles vaccine hesitancy — not only within Mennonite communities, but across faith communities in Canada. While vaccine hesitancy in religious communities is declining, many faith-based communities in Canada remain on the front lines of the ongoing measles resurgence. Four days after Tam’s email to Bauman, Ontario’s chief public health officer Dr. Kieran Moore linked the ongoing outbreak in Ontario to a large Mennonite get-together in New Brunswick last year in a written memo to his colleagues.

“Over 90 [percent] of cases in Ontario linked to this outbreak are among unimmunized individuals,” read the memo. “Cases could spread in any unvaccinated community or population but are disproportionately affecting some Mennonite, Amish, and other Anabaptist communities due to a combination of under-immunization and exposure to measles in certain areas.”

The outbreak has since spiralled into the country’s worst in recent history. With more than 5,000 cases reported in the past year, Canada has already seen more than double the number of measles cases in 2025 than it has in the previous 20 years combined. The spike has been so bad that it has resulted in Canada losing its measles-elimination status, which could take years to earn back.

In September, Richard Chambers, a volunteer administrator with the Canadian Interfaith Conversation, helped organize a nationwide consultation with faith communities alongside the federal agency. A dozen faith leaders were in attendance, Chambers said, including representatives from the Hindu Federation of Canada, the Canadian Council of Imams, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), the Canadian Council of Churches, and the Canadian Multifaith Federation. During the roundtable discussion, public health officials asked faith leaders to circulate measles-prevention fact sheets within their congregations.

In an email to Broadview, Chambers said he was surprised the agency sought their help on the measles outbreak. “I think the real story here is that a federal government agency, of its own volition, has reached out to faith communities for assistance. Frankly, this just doesn’t happen anymore.”

Adam Hanley, The United Church of Canada’s acting co-director of policies and programs for ministry at the Office of Vocation, said he thinks PHAC was hoping that faith communities could be authoritative messengers. “I think they saw, within communities of faith, the trust that faith leaders have with the members of their community,” he said.

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Dr. Natasha Crowcroft, vice-president of the infectious disease and vaccination programs branch at PHAC, told Broadview in an email that the consultations were intended to build confidence in vaccines and equip faith leaders with reliable information to help protect their communities from measles.

“PHAC also sought to learn from faith leaders about effective ways to tailor information for their communities,” wrote Crowcroft. “Early engagement helps build trust, improve understanding of how to best reach communities proactively, and strengthen prevention efforts before outbreaks occur.”

Bauman says those lines of communications have been a two-way offer. In April, PHAC fact-checked an article MCC ran in Die Mennonitische Post — a German-language newspaper circulated among Mennonite communities in Canada, the U.S., and Latin America — about what measles is, how it spreads, why it’s dangerous and how communities can lower their risk, including through vaccination. The paper has about 10,000 subscribers, though Bauman estimates as many as five times that number actually read it, since copies are often shared among families and neighbours.

Another English-language Mennonite outlet, widely read in Ontario, considered publishing the same article published in Die Mennonitische Post, but they ultimately decided against it because they believed measles wasn’t an urgent concern within their congregations at the time. However, Bauman says the community nonetheless appreciated being consulted.

The collaboration has been welcomed by most, but some who attended the roundtable worry the public narrative on Canada’s measles problem has been too narrow. Imam Imran Ally, vice-president of the Canadian Council of Imams, feels media coverage has singled out Mennonites at the expense of a broader message.

“I feel that’s not the best public messaging that could be out there, because measles is not going to differentiate,” he said, drawing links to the early days of COVID-19 and the concurrent spike in anti-Asian racism.

In any case, Bauman knows members of his community are simply grateful to be consulted. He recalls something that a friend — a former teacher in a Mennonite parochial school system near Elmira, Ont. — told him when he said PHAC had reached out:

“We as plain people — who choose to be set apart from mainstream society — are still part of the public,” Bauman recalled his friend telling him. “We want to be a good, helpful, compliant part of that public. We want to act and live in such a way that we don’t put other people at risk.”

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Xavi Richer Vis is a Toronto-based writer and data journalist.