Illinois Outpaces National Vaccination Trends

Illinois’s newly updated School Vaccination Coverage Dashboard shows that coverage rates for all school-required childhood immunizations are holding steady compared to last year, and all but one of those immunizations is above the state’s 95% coverage goal to optimize prevention of infectious disease spread.

The dashboard is put together each year by the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH), using data provided to the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) by PreK-12 schools and school districts across Illinois.

The dashboard tracks immunization rates in the current school year (2025-26) for eleven different school-required childhood vaccinations at more than 4,600 Illinois schools. Data from the updated dashboard shows that immunization rates are slightly higher than the previous school year for ten of those eleven vaccines; the only exception is hepatitis B, which was only 0.03% lower than a year earlier.

One of the most encouraging signs from the dashboard data is that almost all of those statewide childhood immunization rates are above 95% for all students. That 95% threshold is seen as optimal to prevent the spread of infectious diseases and to protect those who cannot be vaccinated for health or other reasons. However, the dashboard shows that despite the overall strong statewide numbers, some counties and individual schools are well below that 95% threshold, potentially making people in those areas more vulnerable to vaccine-preventable illness.

The only immunization under the 95% threshold is the meningococcal vaccine, which protects against meningitis (a type of brain infection) and its complications. However, even this vaccine rate has shown improvement at 94.39%, up from 93.88% the previous year. This is a significant improvement from the 2024-25 school year, when three immunizations (meningococcal, pneumococcal, and Hib) were below 95%.

Measles had one of the highest rates of coverage at 96.78%. As a result, Illinois continues to see low case counts of measles, even as total numbers nationwide have soared to their highest levels since measles was declared “eliminated” in 2000.

“Our latest school immunization numbers validate our efforts to make vaccines more accessible,” said Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.