The Cost of Forgetting: A Conversation Robin Cogan Helped Us Start

 

The Cost of Forgetting: A Conversation Robin Cogan Helped Us Start

By Kim Boller, PhD

Executive Director, Grandparents for Vaccines

As Executive Director of Grandparents for Vaccines and a longtime New Jerseyan, I was grateful to work with Robin Cogan for the last six months and count her as a friend. Robin’s 16 blog posts about Grandparents for Vaccines introduced us to her national and New Jersey audiences. Many readers became members and leaders in our movement to remind parents how high the stakes are, and what will happen if vaccination rates continue to drop.    

We’re a group of grandparents and other committed people who share true stories about what life was like before childhood vaccination was available. There’s Therese, whose sister suffered lifelong disability from measles encephalitis, Janice, who lost her twin brother to polio at age five, and many, many more. We share the stories every way we can, online, in print, and in person.

The national MMR vaccination rate for children entering kindergarten in the 2025–26 school year was 92.4%, well below the approximately 95% coverage generally needed to maintain community protection.[1] Declining vaccination rates should concern us all. We are in dangerous territory, and Grandparents for Vaccines is here to help families remember what life looks like when measles and other serious diseases are allowed to run rampant through our schools and communities.

In August, we launched our first campaign, a back-to-school vaccine education initiative that reached millions. As part of it, and in honor of Robin, we held a backpack drive for preschoolers in Camden, NJ, where she worked as a preschool nurse. We stuffed 250 brightly colored backpacks with coloring books about vaccines, crayons, stickers, and information for parents on vaccine schedules and clinic locations. Together with Robin’s daughter and dear colleagues, the New Jersey Grandparents for Vaccines team honored Robin’s legacy by focusing on the health and safety of children.

Our next big milestone is our first anniversary, on Grandparents Day, September 13. To celebrate, our nearly 6,000 members are doing even more outreach, with a period we’re calling “Two Weeks of Action.” We’re sharing stories every way we can, whether that means speaking at local libraries and PTA meetings, writing letters to the editor, or donating children’s books about vaccines to libraries and health clinics.

As I take in the tremendous amount of work our members are doing, there’s only one word to describe it: relentless.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/schoolvaxview/data/index.html

If you are interested in becoming a guest blogger for The Relentless School Nurse Blog, we would love to hear from you. Please complete the guest blogger interest form, we welcome stories that inspire, educate, and support our school nursing community.

Continuing Robin’s mission with love,

Eileen Gavin