Despite the time commitment and pressure he faces every day as a leader in the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Sameer Vohra says he has no regrets after two-and-a-half months as director of the Illinois Department of Public Health.
Vohra, 39, a primary care pediatrician who earned a medical degree from Springfield’s Southern Illinois University School of Medicine and a law degree from SIU at the same time, told Illinois Times his training and interest in the field known as population health dovetailed with the goals he shares with his boss, Gov. JB Pritzker.
“I had always had a passion for the intersection of policy and health,” Vohra said in an interview Oct. 18. “It’s still a work in progress, obviously, in creating the type of public health system that we need.”
The influx of billions of dollars in COVID-19 relief funding from the federal government, combined with the challenge of reducing the racial and regional inequities in health outcomes highlighted by the pandemic, create opportunities to set long-term improvements in motion, he said.
“That is a vision that I wanted to bring to this job, and a vision that the governor shared in creating a truly dynamic, innovative public health system across Illinois,” Vohra said.
He was hired to replace the former IDPH director, Dr. Ngozi Ezike, who helped steer Illinois through the worst parts of the pandemic and resigned in March to lead the Chicago-based Sinai Health System.
When Vohra accepted Pritzker’s invitation to become part of his cabinet, he was founding chair of SIU’s Department of Population Science and Policy. He currently serves as interim chair of the state’s Children’s Mental Health Partnership.
The Chicago native’s father and mother were from India and worked in the United States as a pharmacist and dentist, respectively. He grew up in the DuPage County village of Westmont.
Vohra’s education includes a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University in political science and science in human culture; a medical residency in pediatrics at University of Chicago; and a master’s degree in public policy from University of Chicago. He received a Fulbright Scholarship in 2009.
Vohra is one of the first IDPH directors in years to be based in Springfield. He said he preferred this arrangement because he, his wife and their two daughters are settled in the capital city. He said he travels to Chicago, where many previous IDPH directors have been based, five to seven days per month.
In a position that pays $186,000 per year, Vohra heads an agency of about 1,200 employees and supervises an annual budget of more than $2 billion. The budget total is more than twice as high as in previous years because of one-time COVID relief money from the federal government.
One of the focuses of Vohra’s work at SIU has been what are known as the “social determinants of health.” These are the many factors outside a doctor’s office – such as poverty, access to transportation, domestic abuse and housing – that research has shown have a much greater impact than clinical care when it comes to life expectancy and long-term health.
COVID-19 has led to more death, hospitalization and other health and economic challenges for Black, Hispanic and low-income Americans because of their access to care, the type of jobs they work, education levels and, in some cases, institutional racism, Vohra said.
In Illinois, he said the pandemic highlighted the longstanding health disparities many people in Illinois and the rest of America face, including in mostly white rural populations.
IDPH recently awarded up to $3.7 million in federal funding to 18 different organizations across the state to address systemic health disparities by “connecting people to vaccinations, food and other well-being needs,” according to a news release from the agency. Included in those groups is the Kappa Sigma Zeta Chapter of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Inc. in Sangamon County.
The pandemic exposed the chronically low-funded and in many cases hollowed out public health system, especially at the local level, Vohra said. He has hopes of increasing permanent state funding for the system.
“We want to build a responsive, nimble public health department that can respond to these needs while also helping build the infrastructure to begin addressing some of the social and structural determinants,” he said. “That will require more investment. COVID-19 showed how critical public health is.”
When it comes to the ongoing pandemic, he said the governor’s recent decision to roll back some masking and testing requirements for health care facilities and long-term care centers are in line with updated federal health recommendations.
Vohra noted that most Illinois counties, including Sangamon, are recording low levels of COVID-19 transmission. Effective vaccines and medical treatments such as Paxlovid and monoclonal antibody infusions are available to blunt the worst effects of the virus, if the public takes advantage of them, he said.
But uptake of the latest COVID-19 booster shots has been relatively low. The New York Times reports that only about 15 million new doses have been given nationally since September, reaching fewer than one in 10 people who are eligible.
Vohra said IDPH is targeting outreach and messaging to those most at risk for COVID-19 complications and deaths – including those with compromised immune systems and those older than 50.
IDPH also is working to create response teams ready to be deployed to nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, he said.
The fact that about one in four eligible Illinoisans have opted not to receive any COVID-19 vaccine doesn’t discourage Vohra. Public health messages need to be repeated, and vaccine advocates need to be patient but persistent, he said.
“We want all of us to get back to our ability to interact and be social in a way that we haven’t really been able to since March 2020,” he said. “We’re really getting close.”
Dean Olsen, a senior staff writer at Illinois Times, can be reached at dolsen@illinoistimes.com or 217-679-7810.
This article appears in Regan Deering takes on Nikki Budzinski.
