The number of suburban Cook County students who are unprotected against vaccine preventable diseases has nearly doubled in the past decade, and the south and southwest suburbs have the lowest vaccination rates in suburban Cook County, according to the Cook County Department of Public Health.
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To help reverse the trend, the department will provide free vaccinations at mobile clinics in the south suburbs and throughout suburban Cook County for the second straight year. The immunizations will be given to children ages 6 months to 18 years, regardless of immigration or insurance status, through mid-October at back-to-school fairs and other community events.
“While we are above the community immunity threshold that’s required to protect suburban Cook County from having outbreaks, we want to ensure that we remain above the 95% vaccination coverage level that is required to sustain that community immunity,” said Dr. Kiran Joshi, chief operating officer of the department.
For the first time in more than a decade, year-over-year vaccination rates in suburban Cook County did tick up slightly against chickenpox, measles, mumps, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, polio and rubella last school year, which Joshi called encouraging. But he noted the increase was largely in public schools.
Rates in private schools continued their declining trend and over the decade, across the board, the number of students who are not protected rose from an average of 6,408 school children in the 2014-2015 school year to 11,978 in the 2025-2026 school year, according to the department.
“That’s a large number of children that are unprotected,” said Joshi.
In the south suburbs, the vaccination rate in the 2025-2026 school year was 96.46%, and in the southwest suburbs, it was 96.49%, he said. By comparison, it was 97.64% in the western suburbs and 96.93% in the northern suburbs. Why are the south and southwest suburbs lagging?
“We attribute this to a number of different factors but suspect that inadequate access to health care is likely the most prominent reason,” Joshi said.
Regarding the decades long decline in vaccination rates for all of suburban Cook County, Joshi attributes that largely to an increase in religious exemptions.
Illinois requires students to have proof of required immunizations to enter school. They must have an Illinois child health examination form signed by a physician, nurse in a physician’s office, school nurse or local health agency that shows the type of immunization given, number of doses for immunizations that require multiple doses and the dates the immunizations were given, the department notes.
If the form is not received by Oct. 15, students are excluded from school until proof of immunization is received or they have a valid medical or religious exemption.
Some 7,164 students submitted religious exemptions for school year 2025-2026, said Joshi. Most religious groups don’t forbid vaccines by doctrine, and because of that health officials think most of the exemptions aren’t actually sought for religious reasons but rather for personal or philosophical reasons, he said.
“Our response to that is to try to communicate as effectively as we can to groups with communities with low vaccination rates about the value and the benefits of vaccinations,” Joshi said.
For example, he said, two doses of the measles vaccine, which is part of the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine, is more than 97% effective at preventing measles.
Some people with measles require hospitalization, can develop pneumonia or encephalitis, which can cause brain damage and long-term cognitive impairment, and severe measles can lead to death, Joshi and other health experts warn.
This year confirmed measles cases nationwide have soared to the highest level since 1991, and about 70% of the cases this year have been in children and teens, the Itasca-based American Academy of Pediatrics reported earlier last week, citing data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There were 2,260 confirmed cases as of July 16, up from 285 in all of 2024 and on track to exceed the 2,289 reported for all of last year, the medical group said. About 93% of people who have contracted measles this year were unvaccinated or had an unknown status.
Measles cases have been reported in 40 states. The biggest outbreaks have been in South Carolina (670), Utah (516), Texas (182), Virginia (176), Florida (141) and Pennsylvania (103). Only four cases have been confirmed in Illinois.
Public health experts have blamed the Trump administration, including U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for declines in vaccine confidence and vaccination rates and spikes in measles outbreaks. Kennedy has been a longtime controversial critic of vaccines, and the Trump administration has been accused of making vaccine policy changes and recommendations that are not based on science and research.
In March, the baiduhai and other media reported on a federal judge’s ruling that temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s move to recommend fewer vaccines for children. The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups.
The lawsuit challenged the CDC’s January 2026 overhaul of the childhood immunization schedule that reduced the number of routine vaccines for children, including vaccines for flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of meningitis and RSV. The Trump administration has appealed the ruling.
Joshi said it’s important for parents to get their children vaccinated as required to not only protect their children, but to protect children who may not be able to get vaccinated because they are allergic and to protect children and others who have low immune systems and are more susceptible to infections overall.
“Maintaining vaccination levels to a point that is above that community immunity threshold is an ongoing challenge that we all need to work towards,” Joshi stressed.
The Cook County Department of Public Health is working to counteract vaccine misinformation, myths and confusion regarding vaccines as part of its efforts to increase vaccination rates.
“We view this as a departmentwide initiative, and the work that we’re doing ranges from getting shots into arms through our community clinics to raising public awareness and addressing vaccine misinformation through our public health communications unit,” Joshi said. “We have a community engagement and health education group that is out in the community.”
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The department also collaborates with colleagues working in the Cook County Medicaid managed care program, CountyCare, to provide information about eligibility and enrollment in the health insurance plan, he said.
Parents seeking to get their children vaccinated can access these free mobile vaccination clinics in the south suburbs:
- From 1-4 p.m. on Aug. 1 at the Dolton Park District, 721 Engle St.
- From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Aug. 8 at the Park Forest/Richton Park Neighborhood Network Resource Center, 200 Main St., Park Forest.
For more information on other upcoming back-to-school vaccination clinics visit the department’s website at cookcountypublichealth.org and search immunizations under the health topcs category. Registration is strongly encouraged.
Organizations in suburban Cook County that would like the department to host an immunization clinic should complete a request form on the website.
Francine Knowles at [email protected] is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.