Oak Park is a resource-rich community when it comes to services and programs offered to people of all walks of life, but there is a disparity in some residents ability to access these resources. The new Illinois Project for Local Needs Assessment, or IPLAN, from the public health department aims to help fix that.
Every five years, municipalities have to submit an IPLAN to the state outlining the assessed health needs, goals and steps to solutions for the community.
The approval of the plan is not only important for guiding years’ worth of public health efforts but also required to be a Certified Local Health Department. For Oak Park, this certification means receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in state funding every year.
Sara Semelka, health education manager, and Chelly Richards, community health advisor, presented the 2026 results which focus on addressing health inequities at the root cause rather than just physical health issues, to the village board at the meeting on Sept. 29. The board unanimously approved the plan and voted to advance it to the state with the expectation of small suggested changes.
“Health equity means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to reach their highest level of health and well-being,” said Semelka at the meeting. “Achieving health equity requires removing barriers that have historically limited opportunities for some groups. These barriers include poverty, discrimination, lack of access to quality education and healthcare, unsafe environments, and unequal social and economic conditions.”
For the first time in over a decade, the public health department created the IPLAN in house, spearheaded by Semelka and Richards, rather than outsource to a consulting company, according to Greg Olsen, the village’s public health director.
“It’s become sort of a checkbox for a lot of the health departments, that they do it to stay certified, and then the plan sits on the shelf somewhere. We didn’t want it to sit on a shelf,” said Olsen. “It is gathering information for the community that should be used for the community.”
The plan is comprised of two parts, the community health assessment and community health improvement plan, informed by about a year and a half of data collection, conversations and work.
The health assessment revealed that there are inequalities in the way residents are able to access healthcare or other services that can be a step in preventing the need for healthcare.
The improvement plan outlined three main priorities to advance health equity: increase access to healthy and safe environments, increase access to positive experience with medical and mental health systems, and implement focused health promotion strategies.
“We believe that by addressing the inequities experienced by some in our community, we’re lifting up all Oak Parkers,” said Semelka.
Each health priority has a series of goals, and each goal has a series of objectives, intervention strategies, process measures and outcome measures.
For the priority of health and safe environments, the presented objective example set the goal of local housing initiatives including a public health perspective and benefitting people experiencing housing insecurity by 2030.
An objective to increase access to positive experiences with health systems is a community-wide coordination and navigation system by 2030. The third priority of health promotion strategies outlined an objective to establish a collaborative group to come up with ideas to increase access to physical and recreational activities for all residents.
The success of the plan is largely rooted in cross-collaboration between local government departments, commissions and community organizations, another unique aspect of the 2026 IPLAN compared to other years.
Olsen highlighted that every current public health department employee is relatively new having all been hired since 2020-2021 or later.
“That just doesn’t lose institutional knowledge, it loses those relationships that have been built up throughout this time,” said Olsen. “So, in a way, the staff that we have now are restarting those relationships, and we really wanted to use the IPLAN as a way to have a fresh start and just build and strengthen on that.”
Many of the outlined goals and objectives also relate to current initiatives being worked on by the village board and staff. The intersection of sustainability with the Climate Ready Oak Park plan, street safety with Vision Zero, and housing initiatives with Shape Oak Park also fall within the scope of public health and are made apparent in the plan.
“I appreciate and love the way that the plan truly embraces sort of all of the endeavors of the government and how communication, education, and engagement is such a core part of the work of public health when it comes to those kinds of endeavors,” said Trustee Brian Straw.
President Vicki Scaman, and other trustees, raised small concerns over needing clearer call-outs and expanded objectives for ageism, substance use and gun violence within the plan, something that will be added before it is submitted to the state.
“Sometimes it’s just really, really important to see it written, to see that ageism is a focus. It’s the largest population of our community,” said Scaman.
Trustees Jenna Leving Jacobson and James Taglia advocated for expanding the section on gun violence education and victim support.
“We do have gun violence, we haven’t fixed it and it should be continually looked at from the standpoint of these multiple guidelines,” said Taglia.
With the changes, the plan will move forward to the state for approval, but the work does not end there. The department will continue to meet with community partners and residents to drive conversations on solutions and design an implementation plan. The progress of the five-year plan will also be able to be monitored by residents once a dashboard is published on the village website.