Mission:
The Northern Illinois Public Health Consortium (NIPHC) is a membership organization of local public health departments serving jurisdictions in the greater Chicago Metropolitan area and is dedicated to promoting and protecting the health of the region though networking and collaborative action that raises public awareness, builds constituency, and influences legislation and policies concerning public health issues affecting northern Illinois.

Goal 1: Ensure that legislative and Illinois state agency policies are more responsive to the public health concerns of northern Illinois.
  1. Influence public health decisions made at the state level that affect the northern Illinois region.
    1. Develop a focused legislative agenda to effectively prioritize, track, and respond to public health legislative issues.
    2. Build relationships with and identify public health champions in the General Assembly.
    3. Collaborate with the Illinois Association of Public Health Administrators (IAPHA) and other organizations to advance public health policy issues.
    4. Build a more effective working relationship with Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) leadership and support IDPH functions in critical areas where NIPHC members have strength.
  2. Increase public health resources available to NIPHC member agencies and the region.
    1. Work to revise distribution formulas used by IDPH for the allocation of grant and contract funds (e.g. bioterrorism, pandemic flu, Local Health Protection Grant, etc.) to greater promote a regional approach to local public health and better take into account population, need, and capacity factors.
    2. Increase Medicaid revenue to local health departments through securing the adoption by the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services (IDHFS) of the Certified Public Entity (CPE) reimbursement mechanism.
    3. Increase Family Case Management program funding through influencing the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) and legislative policies regarding the critical role of local public health agencies.
Goal 2: Raise awareness about and build constituency for public health issues and needs.
  1. Develop greater identity for public health issues and public health agencies through marketing, public relations, and outreach.
    1. Develop a regional public information and media communication strategy.
    2. Establish member agencies as the “go to” source of community health information.
    3. Promote NACCHO’s public health branding initiative.
  2. Build a constituency within the general public, media, civic leaders and elected officials that understands public health and supports public health agencies.
    1. Promote the public health image and activities of public health agencies at partner organizations’ meetings, events, and functions.
    2. Develop and deploy a suite of external communication tools, e.g. web site, promotional materials, fact sheets, etc.
    3. Assist members in more effectively engaging their boards of health for policy, funding, and legislative support.
Goal 3: Increase capacity within NIPHC member agencies and the region to effectively address priority public health issues.
  1. Secure regional infrastructure capacity building funding from IDPH, IDHS, and IDHFS.
  2. Facilitate networking among members to increase information flow and develop a common knowledge base.
  3. Selectively undertake projects for which there is consensus and resources to strategically advance the NIPHC mission.
    1. Use epidemiology and data access capacity to identify regional public health issues, raise awareness, propose solutions and drive policy.
    2. Align member IPLANs to focus attention on issues of regional concern.
    3. Develop a regional approach to improve access to health care services for the uninsured and underinsured of the region and address the critical role of Stroger Hospital.
  4. Encourage greater involvement of NIPHC member senior staff in NIPHC activities.
  5. Promote more practice-relevant graduate public health education.

Click here to download the 2007-08 Strategic Plan in PDF format

The Northern Illinois Public Health Consortium is a 501 (c)(4) organization of the public health departments of the City of Chicago and the Counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, Will, and Winnebago.