Advanced Clinical Intern Bec Havian

In 1961, cardiologist Dr. Stewart Wolf was on vacation in the Poconos when he stopped in Roseto, Pennsylvania - a tiny, homogeneous town made up of Italian immigrants - to get a drink at the local bar. He struck up a conversation with one of the town’s physicians, who said, “You know, it’s so strange - the people of Roseto, they never seem to get heart attacks.” Given his work as a cardiologist, this piqued Dr. Wolf’s interest, so he looked into the claim, scouring the town’s death records. Sure enough, the people of Roseto had half the rate of heart attacks compared to not only the national average but also those of neighboring towns. Intrigued by this finding, Dr. Wolf - who was the Head of the Department of Medicine at the University of Oklahoma - heralded his team of researchers to study the cause of this medical anomaly.

Through their investigation, the researchers found that the rates of suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction, and crime in Roseto were near zero, and there was no one on welfare. “It must be their diet,” they hypothesized. But upon further research, they concluded that the residents’ diets were made up of meatballs fried in lard, pasta, and red meat - many of them qualified as “morbidly obese,” engaged in no exercise, and were smokers. Given these factors, they determined the cause must not be lifestyle-related.

So they moved on to studying their DNA. The researchers tracked down populations who had emigrated from the same part of Italy elsewhere in the US, only to find that those individuals had the same rates of heart disease as the national average. So the cause couldn’t be genetic.

Dr. Wolf and his team went on to rule out every other possible justification for the phenomenon and finally came to the conclusion that the people of Roseto were so resilient because they were never lonely. They lived in multi-generational homes, organized consistent community gatherings, stopped by each other’s homes on their way back from work, took care of each other’s children, and pitched in if someone fell on hard times. The people of Roseto experienced the same, normal stressors as residents of neighboring towns and the rest of the country - challenging jobs, financial pressures - but their cohesive community buoyed them, lowering their sympathetic nervous system’s stress response (leading to a decrease in cortisol and epinephrine), allowing their bodies to heal themselves and protect against illness.

As the younger generations aged, they started to move away from home, and the community became more disconnected, modernized, isolated, and, as a result - lonely. By the end of the 1970’s, the people of Roseto had the same rates of heart disease as the rest of the country.

While it may be challenging to replicate this exact lifestyle in the modern age, the Roseto Effect illustrates the profound impact a close-knit community can have on our health and well-being - in all respects.