LEGISLATING LYME: Disease Prevention Policy and Environmental Governance, 2008 - 2025

Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne illness in the United States, and has risen from 16,000 reported cases in 2000 to over 89,000 in 2023—although the CDC estimates the true annual count may be closer to 476,000 cases. Epidemiologists and ecologists attribute this increase to suburban growth and climate change, which have expanded tick habitats and intensified human exposure. Despite the rapid increase in both case counts and geographic range, there has been no coordinated federal response; in its absence, prevention has been left to individual states, resulting in fragmented approaches. Effective Lyme prevention strategy is fundamentally a matter of environmental control, since it involves managing wild tick populations, animal hosts like mice and deer, and human land-use patterns. This thesis compares legislative approaches in three states representing distinct disease ecologies: Pennsylvania (endemic), Virginia (emergent), and Texas (projected risk). Through qualitative content analysis of 123 legislative documents from 2008 to 2025, this investigation examines how policymakers construct Lyme disease as a public health problem and how this shapes intervention strategies. Drawing on literature from ecology, epidemiology, and political economy, this thesis examines Lyme disease as both an environmental and political phenomenon. The analysis finds that states frame Lyme as an informational problem rather than an ecological one, prioritizing education campaigns and task forces. Drawing on Meyer and Rowan's institutional theory, this thesis argues that across states policy choices function as ceremonial action where legislators adopt visible, low-cost interventions that signal responsiveness and maintain legitimacy, while the structural determinants of transmission are ignored. This results in a gap between what science recommends and what legislatures actually implement.