Pritzker signs bill allowing Illinois to issue state-specific vaccine
guidelines
[December 03, 2025]
By Maggie Dougherty
CHICAGO — Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill Tuesday that he said will
protect Illinois residents from “junk science” undermining
evidence-based vaccine regulations at the federal level.
The bill will allow the Illinois Department of Public Health director,
currently Dr. Sameer Vohra, to issue state-specific guidelines with
input from the state’s Immunization Advisory Committee, a group of
doctors, nurses and public health professionals that advise the
director.
It will also allow the committee to issue guidance that differs from the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including to approve
vaccines for seasonal respiratory illnesses including the flu, COVID-19
and RSV and routine vaccines MMR and Hepatitis B vaccines.
IDPH will now be able to form guidelines using a combination of the
CDC’s guidance, recommendations from the World Health Organization and
other medical and scientific disease prevention experts — and require
that immunizations recommended by the state be covered by
state-regulated insurance plans.
House bill sponsor Rep. Bob Morgan, D-Deerfield, emphasized the
timeliness of the issue, referencing breaking news from Tuesday morning
that indicated the CDC vaccine advisory committee planned to discuss
child immunization schedules and the efficacy of Hepatitis B vaccines
when it meets on Dec. 4 and Dec. 5.
“We have relied on this federal system for trusted medical guidance in
1930,” Morgan said. “And it’s been eviscerated. The trust is gone.”
The state’s advisory committee, which will meet again later this week,
is chaired by Marielle Fricchione, a pediatric infectious diseases
doctor at Rush Children’s Hospital. She said the new changes will make
the committee more diverse, nimble and empowered.
That’s because it requires more voices from around the state to be
heard, allows the committee to follow the science in real time as more
data becomes available and to step in if an IDPH director diverges from
the committee’s guidelines, Fricchione said.
Fricchione added that the scientific innovation behind vaccines was
worth protecting, recounting a story of a 2-year-old girl who she
treated at Rush Hospital over Thanksgiving.
“I can give a kid a vaccine one day, they walk out of the clinic, and
every day, that vaccine is protecting them from suffering, from
preventable diseases that generation of Americans were terrified of,”
Fricchione said.
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Illinois Immunization Advisory Committee Chair Marielle Fricchione
says House Bill 767 will make the committee more diverse, nimble and
empowered to protect Illinois residents from preventable diseases. (CNI
photo by Maggie Dougherty)
Partisan vaccine debate
Illinois legislators passed House Bill 767 on a party-line vote this
October during the annual fall veto session. Republican legislators
largely opposed the bill for its political undertones.
The new law follows a September executive order in which Pritzker
directed IDPH to develop its own vaccine guidelines after the Food and
Drug Administration withdrew approval of COVID-19 vaccines for children,
pregnant patients and adults under age 65 without underlying risk
conditions.
Before signing the bill, Pritzker took aim at U.S. Health and Human
Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who built his campaign on
questioning the efficacy of vaccines and arguing that they cause autism,
despite the lack of credible evidence supporting the assertions.
“While RFK Jr. and his QAnon-inspired colleagues spreading conspiracy
theories and dangerous misinformation about vaccines are running around
Washington, Illinois is stepping up to protect the health of our
people,” Pritzker said.
Tripti Kataria, president-elect of the Illinois State Medical Society,
applauded the bill’s signing and said she understood the amount of
medical information could be confusing. She encouraged anyone concerned
about vaccines to discuss it with their physicians.
Illinoisians have followed the science in the past, Pritzker said, with
a 50% increase in measles vaccine uptake after the first cases were
reported in April.
“We trust science here in Illinois,” Pritzker said. “So let today be a
reminder to anyone listening, especially now in the midst of the flu
season: Get yourself vaccinated, get your children vaccinated. Encourage
your friends, especially our seniors, to get vaccinated. It is safe, it
is effective, and it’s the right thing to do.”
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coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily
by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. |
