RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, The Chicago City Council has been informed of Dr. Ngozi Ezike's resignation effective March 14, 2022 as Director of the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) by Alderman Edward M. Burke; and
WHEREAS, Dr. Ezike graduated with honors from Harvard College with a concentration in Chemistry before earning her Medical Degree from the University of California, San Diego and completed her internship and residency at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago; and
WHEREAS, She also earned a Management Certificate from Harvard Business School, and has an Honorary Doctor of Community Health Degree from Southern Illinois University Carbondale based on a recommendation that she has been widely praised for her dedicated efforts as part of a leadership team within the State of Illinois to address the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on all Illinoisans; and
WHEREAS, Dr. Ezike is fluent in Spanish and French in addition to English, and also speaks some Swahili and Portuguese; and
WHEREAS, Dr. Ezike's professional career through early 2022 has been entirely based in Illinois. She provided inpatient care at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County in Chicago, was Medical Director at the Austin Health Center in Chicago's West Side, and, until January 2020, Medical Director at the Cook Counly Juvenile Detention Center in Chicago, the largest single site juvenile detention facility in the country. She is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago; and
WHEREAS, Dr. Ezike has also been a national policy advisor on juvenile correctional health topics, who has presented at numerous local and national conferences for medical professionals and youth audiences. She has also been a federal court monitor for health-related matters concerning juvenile correctional facilities under consent decree; and
WHEREAS, Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker appointed Dr. Ezike, as Director of IDPH from January 2019 and was a highly visible member of Governor Pritzker's Administration during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the early months of the pandemic in 2020, when both the Governor and Dr. Ezike were on television and radio nearly every weekday in over 160 briefings to discuss the state's pandemic situation, Dr. Ezike would make her daily speech twice, first in English and then again in Spanish; and
WHEREAS, Dr. Ezike has been a steady force of clarity and an empathetic voice during frightening, and unprecedented times dispensed sound advice and tips on how Illinois could protect themselves from COVID-19 amid the pandemonium and avalanche of misinformation coming from all directions; and
WHEREAS, On March 1, 2022, Dr. Ezike announced that she would resign as the Director of IDPFI to spend more time with her family. At the announcement, Governor Pritzker expressed
his appreciation for Dr. Ezike's work and regret that she was leaving, stating, "I am not putting it lightly when I say that she has had one ofthe hardest jobs in the world"; now; therefore
BE IT RESOLVED, That we, the Mayor and the members ofthe Chicago City Council, assembled this twenty-third day of March, 2022, do hereby recognize Dr. Ezike's compassion and steadfastness; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That a suitable copy ofthis resolution be presented to Dr. Ezike along with the congratulations and best, wishes ofthe City of Chicago, and be it further resolved, that March 23, 2022 be declared Dr. Ngozi Ezike Day in the City of Chicago.
Edward M. Burke Alderman, 14th Ward