Before 1965, people in Roseto...
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Before 1965, people in Roseto, a small town in eastern Pennsylvania, had almost no heart problems in their community. So researchers set out to determine why that was so, because the people in Roseto seemed to smoke as much as people in the surrounding towns, they seemed to eat the same kind of food, and they went to the same doctors and hospitals. Yet the death rate from heart attacks was significantly lower for the people who lived in Roseto. Why was that?
What researchers concluded was the main factor that made Roseto different from its neighboring towns was that since 1882, Roseto had a history of being a tight-knit community. Founded by immigrants from southern Italy, the town was full of three-generation households with strong commitments to church and family. Yet when those traditions began to erode in the 1960s, so did Roseto's health. Because by the 1970s, Roseto had become like most towns, a community of strangers, and their level of heart disease increased to match the surrounding region.
What studies like that have been concluding is that it's one thing for us to know that we're loved, and to receive an occasional phone call or a letter in the mail to remind us that we're cared about. But what makes the biggest difference is to have someone to be there with us, to constantly show us that we're loved.
-- Bowen
What researchers concluded was the main factor that made Roseto different from its neighboring towns was that since 1882, Roseto had a history of being a tight-knit community. Founded by immigrants from southern Italy, the town was full of three-generation households with strong commitments to church and family. Yet when those traditions began to erode in the 1960s, so did Roseto's health. Because by the 1970s, Roseto had become like most towns, a community of strangers, and their level of heart disease increased to match the surrounding region.
What studies like that have been concluding is that it's one thing for us to know that we're loved, and to receive an occasional phone call or a letter in the mail to remind us that we're cared about. But what makes the biggest difference is to have someone to be there with us, to constantly show us that we're loved.
-- Bowen
