As part of its celebration of National Public Health Week from April 1–7, the Oak Park Public Health Department is marking 75 years as a state-certified local health department.
Oak Park sustains one of only a handful of municipal-level public health departments with this distinction. The Public Health Department was founded in 1905 and led the community through outbreaks of typhoid, influenza and small pox.
In 1949, it was certified by the Illinois Department of Public Health.
Currently, Oak Park’s Health Department has four divisions: Emergency Preparedness, Environmental Health, Health Education and Nursing. It also manages and operates the Oak Park Farmers’ Market.
Additionally, the Health Department has an epidemiologist and a grants coordinator to manage more than a dozen grants that keep the department’s programming running smoothly throughout the year.
The Health Department offers a wide variety of services to Oak Parkers to keep the community as healthy as possible, such as restaurant, grocery and bakery inspections, rat abatement, pet licensing, emergency preparedness planning, community health data tracking, communicable disease response, healthcare referrals and free trainings on opioid overdose prevention.
The Health Department also enforces state and local health codes.
Learn more about Oak Park’s Public Health Department at www.oak-park.us/health, and sign up for its monthly Health Beat e-newsletter at www.oak-park.us/enews to stay up to date on Health Department programming and opportunities.