Gail O’Neill began her career at the Springfield Department of Public Health in 1986, first teaching 5- and 6-year-olds the importance of brushing their teeth, then later counseling people newly diagnosed with HIV.
She ended her career Sept. 29 as director of the Sangamon County Department of Public Health, which merged with the city department in 2006, after more than three years as a leader in the local response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
O’Neill, 66, became director in 2019, succeeding the retiring Jim Stone after being his assistant director since the merger. She has helped the community deal with many health challenges, but she knows she may be most remembered for her calm face and steady voice as she dispensed advice to the public through the news media on how to protect themselves from COVID-19 and reduce its spread.
The loss of life related to coronavirus in Sangamon County was devastating, and COVID-19 mitigations she supported caused some hard feelings in the business community, she said.
Some people questioned advice that changed during the pandemic about masking and other precautions as doctors learned more about the virus even though such discoveries are part of the scientific process, she said.
Some people also were resistant to vaccine recommendations and mandates in a politically charged environment statewide and nationally, she said.
But O’Neill said she will remember her career in public health fondly, even the time since COVID-19 hit Springfield in March 2020.
“I’ve learned so much over the years and worked with some awesome people,” she said.
The once-in-a-generation pandemic killed more than 450 Sangamon County residents and more than 40,400 people across Illinois. The state’s COVID-19 death rate was lower than in adjacent states except for Wisconsin, according to federal health data.
When asked whether she became depressed during the pandemic’s worst months, O’Neill said, “a little bit,” but she focused on the teamwork she enjoyed both within the health care field and as part of Sangamon County’s “incident command center” of medical, governmental and nonprofit officials that guided the response.
“I had wanted this job, and there were the rest of us here, all working together, and at the end of the day, it felt like we had done some good,” she said.
O’Neill raved about the dedication of her 105-member staff – both before and during the pandemic – saying everyone’s actions undoubtedly saved lives and helped avoid Springfield hospitals becoming overwhelmed.
“I need to remind the staff of that, because we did have a lot of turnover during that time period,” she said.
Two-thirds of the staff left and eventually was replaced after stress and changing personal priorities led to many resignations, she said.
O’Neill said she appreciated the support from county government when it provided up-front money, to be reimbursed later by federal pandemic relief funds, so the health department could hire additional nurses, contact tracers and fund other pandemic-response efforts.
The county health department became the supervising agency when a COVID-19 mass vaccination site was opened at the Illinois State Fairgrounds and operated with help from Illinois National Guard troops.
Health directors in some other Illinois counties lacked such support because of less cash flow and politics that discouraged some county boards from diverting resources to deal with what some citizens viewed as an overhyped epidemic or a liberal hoax, she said.
O’Neill, who was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up in Peoria, the daughter of a Caterpillar Inc. manager, earned an annual salary of $135,705 as director and supervised a county-operated department with an annual budget of $10 million.
She has a bachelor’s degree in health education from Western Illinois University, is married and has two sons, one stepson and six grandchildren.
The health department provides free and low-cost immunizations, counsels low-income parents, administers the Women, Infants and Children program, tracks and treats many communicable diseases, inspects restaurants and sewer systems, and runs the county animal control center, among other duties.
The department also serves as a satellite site for a primary care clinic operated by Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, and it operates the Menard County Department of Public Health as part of a contract with Menard County Government.
About $1.7 million of the health department’s budget comes from property taxes. Most of the rest comes from state and federal grants and revenue from fees, fines and forfeitures.
A committee made up of Sangamon County Board and Sangamon County Board of Health members has nominated John Ridley, most recently a system administrator at Memorial Health, to be the next director of the health department.
Ridley, 59, who began his health care career in 1994 as a radiation therapist at Springfield Memorial Hospital, led multiple specialty clinics and post-acute care services across the system, according to a news release.
The Springfield native previously was chief operating officer at Decatur Memorial Hospital. He served six years of active duty in the U.S. Navy and earned a bachelor’s degree in health administration from the University of Illinois Springfield and a master’s in health care delivery science from Dartmouth College.
Ridley assumed the role of acting director on Oct. 2, and his appointment for the permanent position will be considered by the boards later in October.
“I have full faith that the department will have an effective leader that employees can rely on,” O’Neill said.
Ridley will be paid $150,000 per year, a county spokesperson said. When asked why Ridley will be paid more than O’Neill, County Administrator Brian McFadden, through a spokesperson, said the difference resulted from a “review of comparable counties, competing market forces and the difference in education.”
O’Neill’s memories from her time at the city and county health departments included mass immunizations for bacterial meningitis in 1994, a leptospirosis outbreak in 1998 associated with a triathlon at Lake Springfield, efforts to guard against terrorism after the World Trade Center terrorist attack in 2001, high demand for H1N1 flu vaccine in 2009, the move to a new headquarters on Springfield’s east side at 2833 South Grand Ave. E. in 2010 and the formation of a communitywide opioid task force in 2017.
County Board Chairman Andy Van Meter said O’Neill’s “entire career has been a series of superlatives.” She was the “answer woman” during the pandemic, he said.
This article appears in Reconstructing Springfield’s high schools.
