Indiana Department of Health will lose nearly $40 million in federal funds after the Trump administration in March cancelled COVID-era funding linked to addiction, mental health and other public health programs. Local health advocates say there will be "dire consequences" without the funds that addressed more than just coronavirus.
Many states have at least one immunization coalition that provides vaccine education and resources for health care providers. Sara Louise Dillard, communications director for the Indiana Immunization Coalition, said most don’t have an immunization clinic, but IIC is one of the exceptions.
Federal funds allowed the IIC to open a free immunization clinic in 2021 to provide COVID-19 vaccines and other shots recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The money also paid for the organization to partner with local health departments and schools to host at least four health clinics a week, health fairs in rural counties and input vaccination records.
“Vaccine records are actually quite cumbersome, especially if you have vaccine records in different languages,” Dillard said. “So, it's very hard for small health departments [and] school nurses to stay on top of all that data and record keeping.”
Now, the future of those programs is in flux, she said, because the IIC's budget relied heavily on this funding. The coalition will lose nearly one-third of the funding this year.
The coalition received about $3.5 million from the CDC in 2024. They had already spent $2.5 million of those funds when the federal funding cuts were announced in late March, and would lose the remaining $1 million.
The funds paid the entire salary for IIC’s five-person data team and portions of other staff salaries.
“It's going to be really difficult times ahead and difficult decisions are going to need to be made,” Dillard said.
Although the national public health emergency for COVID-19 ended in 2023, coronavirus is still present. Advocates like Marc McAleavey, CEO of the Indiana Public Health Association, said the lack of funding will lead to "monumental" health setbacks across the state and the country, especially since the money supported more than just coronavirus vaccination efforts.
“By taking away this funding, we are in essence, pushing us back to pre-pandemic levels of funding which wasn't enough,” McAleavey said. “The narrative and the reasoning that, ‘We're taking away this funding because COVID doesn't exist anymore and it's ridiculous to pay organizations and departments these funds.’ It's just not true.”
Now, Dillard is concerned about the future of public health, especially due to several outbreaks of measles — an airborne, highly infectious virus that has mostly been eradicated in the U.S. for decades thanks to a highly effective vaccination effort. Two doses of the MMR (mumps, measles and rubella) vaccine are 97% effective at preventing measles.
The Indiana Department of Health has announced six cases of measles so far this year, four of them in unvaccinated children and the adults’ vaccination status is unclear. According to IDOH, the cases have no known links to outbreaks in other areas. Measles began to spread in late January in New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Mexico and Texas, according to the Associated Press. In Texas more than 500 measles cases have been reported in 2025.
“Kids are going to start getting sick,” Dillard said. “And when you take away a service like ours, making it harder for parents to vaccinate their children, it's going to be devastating.”
Nearly 85% of Indiana kids ages 13-18 received the MMR vaccine at the end of 2024. But the CDC recommends a 95% community vaccination rate to reduce the rate of virus circulation in the community.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spoken against some vaccines in the past, recently urged people to get the MMR shot to help slow the spread of measles.
Contact WFYI’s health reporter Elizabeth Gabriel at egabriel@wfyi.org.
