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Michigan health officials and doctors on Wednesday again urged parents to keep their children up to date on routine immunizations as diseases like measles and whooping cough surge in the state.
Eighteen cases of measles have been detected in Michigan this year, the most since an outbreak of measles in Oakland County in 2019, said Ryan Malosh, the director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of Immunization.
The state has also seen 855 cases of pertussis ― also known as whooping cough ― so far this year, including 152 in children less than 2 years old. In 2024, there were over 2,000 cases of whooping cough in Michigan, a 1,700% increase since 2023 when there were 110 cases.
The I Vaccinate campaign, a public-private partnership that provides parents with information about vaccination, held a virtual roundtable Wednesday morning with several local and state health officials to urge parents to get their kids vaccinated. They said declining vaccination rates have contributed to an increase in cases of some diseases.
“These diseases are preventable,” Malosh said. “We have the tools to prevent them, and we encourage all parents to check their child’s vaccination status, to make sure that they’re up to date on all of their immunizations, and to get ready for going back to school by protecting themselves against these diseases.”
He said Michigan’s coverage for the routine childhood immunization series was around 75% in 2019. That number is now around 70%.
Experts point to a number of factors for why parents aren’t getting their children vaccinated, including the spread of misinformation and disinformation, and fewer public health resources.
Dr. Pamela Rockwell, a clinical professor of family medicine at the University of Michigan and the chair of the Michigan Advisory Committee on Immunizations, believes misinformation is the “No. 1 reason” that people aren’t getting vaccinated. She said there are many websites that appear credible, but aren’t.
“Misinformation is wildly disseminated, not only on social media, but unfortunately now by top government officials,” she said.
Rockwell said there also is “some confusion and changes going on at the federal level” when it comes to vaccine recommendations.
“But the state of Michigan is holding firm to following evidence-based, strong data-supported recommendations to keep our kids and communities safe,” she said.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a vocal anti-vaccine activist before getting into government, and recently fired the entire 17-member Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine board and replaced it with a group that includes several anti-vaccine voices.
In late June, those advisers said they would be evaluating the “cumulative effect” of the children’s vaccine schedule — the list of immunizations given at different times throughout childhood.
The American Academy of Pediatrics said it would continue publishing its own vaccine schedule for children but now will do so independently of the government advisory panel, calling it “no longer a credible process.”
Rockwell reminded parents to think about vaccines ― both for themselves and their kids ― as their children get ready to return to school.
Whooping cough is a highly contagious upper respiratory infection that starts with cold-like symptoms and progresses into a severe cough, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Malosh noted that 27 children in Michigan have been hospitalized with whooping cough this year.
“As any parent knows, having to take your kid to the hospital is really a traumatic thing to have happen, and spending a couple of days in the hospital with a sick kid is nothing that anybody wants to do,” he said.
He said the coverage rate for the DTaP vaccine, which protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, for children 19 to 35 months old is 71%, so “there’s some work that we could do to have better coverage in that age group.”
Dr. Joshua Meyerson, a pediatrician and the medical director for the Health Department of Northwest Michigan, said there have been cases of whooping cough in adults and children in most counties that his department oversees over the past 12 months. The department serves Antrim, Charlevoix, Emmet and Otsego counties.
“In the schools or communities with lower immunization rates, we’ve seen larger outbreaks,” he said.
The officials on Wednesday also said measles is on the rise. In the U.S., 2025 has had the most measles cases of any year since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000, according to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Measles is a highly contagious disease that causes a high fever, a rash, a cough and other symptoms, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
Malosh said the coverage rate for the MMR vaccine for children 19 to 35 months old in Michigan is about 79%. He said there needs to be a vaccine coverage or immunity coverage of about 95% in a given population to prevent an outbreak of measles.
Rockwell said there have been three confirmed deaths in the U.S. from measles this year.
Malosh said the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services partnered with a firm to conduct a survey this year on parental attitudes on immunizations. The results suggest that nearly 84% of parents who are vaccinated indicate that childhood vaccines are very or extremely important. He said 842 parents participated in the survey.
Malosh said they also learned from the survey that parents trust their doctors and other health providers.
“Nearly 90% of parents are indicating that they trust these health care professionals when it comes to vaccine information,” he said.