Ahmed Ali has spent the last seven years building something for a South Seattle community he considers his home.
Inside a small storefront a few blocks from the light rail stop, Othello Station Pharmacy has largely flourished as a neighborhood space that provides prescriptions, medical screenings, vaccines and more. It has expanded even as other Seattle drugstores close. And during the COVID-19 pandemic, the pharmacy team stayed busy, diving into vaccination efforts and public health partnerships that focused on administering shots and correcting virus misinformation.
Ali thought much of this work would last, that the country would remember how COVID vaccines offered a way out of the pandemic, despite how politically divisive the topic became. But as 2025 progresses, Ali and his staff have watched as federal support wanes and vaccine programs, including his own, start to unravel.
We're really putting our public in jeopardy at this point," said the 43-year-old pharmacist, worried what outbreaks might be ahead if unvaccinated pockets grow here and nationwide.
In the first seven months of President Donald Trump's return to office, government support for vaccines has flipped, resulting in widespread funding cuts and drastic changes in the country's public health leadership, marked by mass firings of top scientists and expert advisers. The latest blow came this week with the announcement of U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s plans to pull $500 million in federal funding to develop mRNA vaccines, an innovation credited for slowing the coronavirus pandemic.
At the same time, though Washington state's vaccination rates are typically high, vaccine hesitancy has wormed its way into doctors' offices and pharmacies here, too. School immunization rates, one measure of a community's vaccination, dropped slightly this past academic year.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen now,” Ali said.
Vaccines on the move
At a Central Seattle health fair this spring, nurse practitioner Ramla Abdi chatted with a patient as she deftly prepped a needle to deliver a flu shot. She's worked with Othello Station for about three years, but she doesn't spend a lot of time at the pharmacy.
Since 2021, Othello Station has sent a mobile vaccine team to dozens of community health fairs like this, providing shots in schools, homes, long-term care facilities, community centers and other places throughout King County.
Until recently, its mobile work was made possible through a federal COVID grant to Public Health - Seattle & King County, which contracted with Othello Station and Kelley-Ross pharmacies, another local provider, according to public health spokesperson Kate Cole.
Although COVID shots were the focus, providers also offered RSV and flu vaccines to people who were homebound, homeless or lived in long-term care, and administered childhood immunizations at schools, according to King County's public health department.
These pharmacy partnerships were part of the county's broader efforts to get COVID shots to people who might lack access to vaccines or medical care.
Because of federal cuts, these programs ended in June.
In other parts of Washington, public health work around vaccine equity and education will likely also start to crumble, as the state figures out how to slice up federal funds for next year.
In early 2025, the state Department of Health anticipated getting about $9.5 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for "core" vaccine services in fiscal 2026. In early July, the CDC told the state it would instead receive $7.8 million in funds that help support affordable vaccines for children, according to DOH.
A CDC spokesperson declined to confirm whether the funding changed, but wrote in a statement "some awards differ from those in the previous (funding) cycle" due to "updates to the funding methodology."
"Washington is exploring other short-term funding to support vital immunization work,” such as through other CDC grants, Jamilia Sherls, director of the state’s Office of Immunization, wrote in an email. If that doesn’t pan out, “it will mean long-term reductions,” Sherls wrote.
The losses will likely mean fewer kids can get shots through the state's Childhood Vaccine Program, funded with federal and state dollars, the health department said. All Washington children under 19, whether or not they have insurance, can receive a vaccine through the program.
The state will also face challenges expanding access to shots, updating data dashboards and offering vaccine education. In July, the state's Care-a-Van program stopped giving COVID, flu and childhood vaccines, though the mobile health clinic still drives around Washington to provide blood pressure and glucose checks, mental health screenings, and naloxone and opioid prevention resources at community and school events.
"As we head into fall, we definitely anticipate there will be renewed demand and new challenges," said Fardous Guled, a registered nurse at Othello Station who was in charge of scheduling the pharmacy's mobile vaccine clinics. "We're just going to be flexible, creative, and try to focus on equity as much as we can."
Stalling vaccination rates
Before Ali and his co-founder Abdirahman Tache opened Othello Station Pharmacy in 2018, Ali had been managing a Walgreens for years.
When the two decided to pivot from the corporate pharmacy world to independent local pharmacies, Ali wanted to return to the NewHolly area, where he and his family first moved when they arrived from Somalia.
“I wanted to come back to the same neighborhood that welcomed me as a refugee in 1998," he said.
Throughout the COVID pandemic, the Othello Station staff members worked hard to fight against the virus and curb deaths.
They translated vaccine facts, recorded videos that answered common immunization questions, and scaled up community vaccine clinics. They explained to patients the science behind the shots, and listened to people who were skeptical of the health care system.
"I was just trying to respond to the community's needs," Ali said.
The last few years, the pharmacy has stayed focused on vaccines, partly because of the pandemic, but also because Ali has seen childhood vaccination rates stall and misinformation around several diseases intensify, including the myth that MMR vaccines (for measles, mumps and rubella) cause autism.
During the 2019-20 school year, about 92% of K-12 students were immunized with required shots against diseases like chickenpox, measles, polio and hepatitis A, according to state data. During this past 2024-25 school year, the percentage dropped to just below 90%.
In King County, school districts farther south — where Othello Station primarily focused its mobile efforts — typically report lower-than-average vaccination rates, according to state and local immunization data.
While Seattle Public Schools recorded an 89.9% vaccination rate during the 2024-25 academic year, for example, DOH reported around 80% for the Kent and Federal Way districts.
“Our rates are not where we would like to see them,” said Sherls, the state's immunization director. “That’s concerning for many reasons. We’re starting to see the reemergence of communicable diseases that were once kept at bay.”
Measles is a prime example, she said. The country is battling an ongoing outbreak of the highly infectious disease, with high death counts in Texas and Louisiana. Measles had been considered eradicated in the U.S.
In Washington state this year, there have been at least 10 recorded measles cases, though no outbreaks have been detected to date.
While feelings around vaccines in a given community can be hard to track, Sherls said she's seen a growing number of social media posts from parents looking for medical providers in Washington who "are OK with not vaccinating kids."
Those posts have "been keeping me up at night," she said earlier this year.
What's the plan?
Federal vaccine cuts mean Ali has recently had to let go of several staffers who ran the pharmacy's mobile clinics.
Othello Station can still give vaccines to most children and adults if they come to its storefronts in Seattle and Tukwila, Ali said. His team gives about 10 to 12 shots a day, mostly for summer travel purposes, to protect against diseases like malaria, typhoid or yellow fever.
The need for respiratory virus and childhood vaccines will likely become more urgent in a few months, when the new school year starts and sick season is around the corner, he said.
State and local public health teams are trying to prepare where they can.
At Public Health - Seattle & King County, some mobile efforts continue in limited capacity, said spokesperson Sharon Bogan. Through the local Best Starts for Kids, the public health department will still able to host some school vaccine clinics, mainly focusing on South King County districts, Bogan said.
Meanwhile, the topic of vaccines — and vaccine hesitancy — comes up almost daily for many pediatricians and providers at children's hospitals in the Puget Sound region.
"Our role is around what keeps kids healthy," said Dr. Shaquita Bell, senior medical director of Odessa Brown Children's Clinic, a Seattle Children's hospital clinic. "We're not out stumping for a candidate or telling you what to put on your ballot. We just want your child to be healthy."
Yes, funding and policies around the topic might continue to change, providers say. But their practices stay the same.
On a recent weekday afternoon, Othello Station Pharmacy buzzes with activity. Customers file in and out, while pharmacy technicians and assistants hustle from one task to the next. The phone rings every few minutes.
Near the front, a shelf displays a line of awards and commendations that memorialize the staff's vaccination work. One is from 2022. That year, the CDC named Ali a national "Immunization Champion.
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