Since the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe, vaccination rates, which were at all-time stable highs, have dropped and not recovered, according to the CDC.
The Langlade County Health Department has a plan to make standard vaccinations more accessible.
Back to school season is here, and in Langlade County, the health department wants to make sure everybody- both children and their families- are ready for it.
That’s why on August 22nd, they’re offering a community-wide county health fair, complete with free standard and required immunizations, sports physicals, haircuts, hearing and vision checks, and even free car seat checks.
All in all, there will be 56 different community partners at the fair in booths.
Sheila Rine is the Chair of the Langlade County Immunization Coalition.
“The goal is to improve our immunization rates,” she explained.
Rine explained that there’s currently an uptick in whooping cough, which the Tdap vaccine protects against.
“I think a lot of it, unfortunately, is like when COVID hit, and that brought the decrease in regular vaccinations,” she explained.
In April, WXPR reported on a case of the measles, which also has an available vaccine, in Dane and Rock County.
This year, the Wisconsin Department of Health is requiring children entering 7th and 12th grade to have their meningitis vaccine, and at the health fair, partners are not only offering the meningitis vaccine, but also a $25 gift card to those who get the shot.
“We based our theme on the Summer Olympics. So it says ‘health is our gold’. And obviously ‘gold’ is spelled ‘goal’. Goal, get it? And so when people come in, you'll get a card, and you have to find we'll have five torches for the five Olympic rings hidden throughout five of the booths. And once people find all five rings, then they'll be able to put it in for a prize of their choice,” said Rine.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many negative changes, but public health officials are hopeful that we can learn from this time to better healthcare.
They’re modeling the fair off COVID-19 vaccination clinics held by Public Health Madison and Dane County during 2021 and 2022.
Morgan Finke is the Communications Coordinator for Public Health Madison and Dane County.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, they’ve started holding routine vaccination clinics, as well as mobile clinics for COVID-19 vaccines.
“We’re noticing, kind of anecdotally, that we're not getting as many calls from folks looking kind of frantically for vaccines for children heading into the school year as we did in years past. Because I think getting ahead of it with some of those earlier in the year vaccine clinics were helpful to getting kids up to date,” explained Finke.
In Dane County, the percentage of students who met the minimum requirements was 93.4% in the 2023-24 school year, up from 92.1% the previous year and higher than the state average at 89.2%.
Rine says that some vaccines still require insurance and they’re not able to offer all the vaccines they would like to at this time, but she’s still very hopeful the fair will improve vaccination rates in Langlade County.
