Oak Park’s Public Health Department has been a state-certified local health department for 75 years, but facets of the robust department residents know now existed long before then, too.
It’s unusual for municipalities’ public health department to have this state-certification and only a handful do, according to village officials. Some requirements of state certification include having an environmental health supervisor, creating an emergency preparedness plan, ensuring the director meets certain qualifications and implementing a board of health, said Theresa Chapple, Oak Park’s public health director.
Oak Park has high standards, said Frank Lipo, executive director of The Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest. The “world’s largest village” as it was known for part of the 20th century, has diverse citizens with a variety of public health needs.
“It seemed like ‘Come on, we’re really, today we’d say a progressive community, we’re a real cutting-edge type community,” Lipo said. “[And] we don’t have a full-time health commissioner. We don’t have as much professional expertise in some of these areas.”
So, Oak Park decided to change that.
Before certification
In 1905, Frank Needham was the first to lead the Oak Park Public Health Department which was established by a village ordinance. In 1907, the department dealt with one of its first serious health crises, which was likely scarlet fever, Lipo said.
“The alarming spread of contagious disease throughout the community during the week prompted the board of education, on the recommendation of the board of health, to close the high and grade schools on Friday morning for an indefinite period,” Lipo read from a 1907 Oak Leaves article.
In 1913, the public health department dealt with more than 225 cases of measles and nearly 100 of scarlet fever, Lipo said. In the next few years, the department responded to typhoid in 1915, the Spanish flu in 1918 and smallpox in 1920, according to village officials.
In the late 1940s, there still weren’t as many childhood vaccinations available, Lipo said, and as a result, in 1947 the department dealt with numerous cases of chicken pox, polio, pneumonia, scarlet fever and whooping cough.
An Oak Leaves article from Feb. 2, 1907, describes an “alarming spread of [a] contagious disease” in the village. Credit: Courtesy of The Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest 
An Oak Leaves article from July 17, 1915, says the Oak Park Board of Health “will not” make a definitive statement regarding the source of typhoid cases. Credit: Courtesy of The Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest 
Frank Needham, a former commissioner of health in Oak Park, signed a resolution Dec. 4, 1920, regarding cases of smallpox in schools. Credit: Courtesy of The Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest 
A report from 1937 details cases of communicable diseases in the village including chicken pox, measles and scarlet fever. Credit: Courtesy of The Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest 
An Oak Leaves paper from Aug. 26, 1943, shows an article about a case of polio in Oak Park. Credit: Courtesy of The Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest
When it came to sanitation inspections, the level of requirements needed today were not enforced then. Many inspectors, before the department was certified, had minimal training and little to no relevant education, Lipo said.
Today, health inspectors are required to be highly skilled professionals, Chapple said. They are required to have at least 30 credits in science in their undergraduate program, they must pass state and federal tests to become a licensed health inspector and undergo training for up to a year. Restaurants and other places that serve food in Oak Park are inspected up to three times a year based on their risk level, she said.
1949 certification
The growth of the health department was gradual, Lipo said. For the public health department to adopt the structure it has today, it had to add more professional, full-time staff with expertise in different aspects of health and maintain or increase its budget.
In addition to general improvements, the department had to make some specific improvements, too. For example, it had to develop an educational program on ice cream and other frozen desserts. It also had to eliminate duplicate inspections of ice cream and milk.
It took a couple years for all the necessary upgrades to be implemented, Lipo said.
Before it was certified in 1949, the board of health and other positions in the department were not necessarily paid, or were paid little, Lipo said. After certification, more professionals in the department were upgraded to paid positions.
Now, the department has 15 full-time positions and three contracted, part-time ones, Chapple said.
Today’s department
The department has several divisions today which include epidemiology, emergency preparedness, environmental health, health education and nursing, Chapple said. About 40% of the department is funded through general revenue and 60% of its funding comes from grants, Chapple said.
Some of the department’s newer programs include its opioid overdose prevention project, which includes distribution of NARCAN, an opioid-blocking, life-saving drug and its work to teach people to lock up guns safely, with the intention to prevent shootings and reducing suicide risk.
During COVID-19, the health department had to respond quickly along with the rest of the world. But the communicable disease work within the department is more than just COVID-19 response, Chapple said. It responds to other respiratory viruses like the flu, and other diseases such as measles, which is spreading in Chicago.
“When there’s national public health issues, Oak Park’s department adapts to it,” Lipo said. “It’s kind of just constantly evolving.”
The department has also launched an initiative with the help of its epidemiologist to examine data regarding sexually transmitted infections in Oak Park and target help toward affected populations, Chapple said.
“We’re really taking the time to look at the data and understand the spread … so that we can start to finally see a decline in our STI rates, which have been on the incline for quite some time,” she said.
The emergency preparedness plans allow Oak Park to be able to respond effectively to dangerous situations.
For example, in the event of a community-wide blackout, individuals who use respiratory machines would have an extreme need for electricity, Chapple pointed out. The plan helps ensure the village has a list of those individuals and can inform the necessary electric company who they are, she said.
Chapple said one of the initiatives the department is working on in the future includes increasing residents’ ability to walk, bike and run without impediments or barriers. To achieve this, the health department is working with the village to implement Vision Zero, a commitment to eliminating death or injuries from traffic crashes, Chapple said.
Another new initiative is Safe2Help Illinois, which, if implemented, would allow residents to contact schools anonymously regarding the safety of another community member. This would include concern about that person taking their own life or bringing a gun on school grounds, Chapple said.
“That’s really the goal of public health is to prevent the spread of disease, to promote good health and to protect the health of the community,” she said.
