DuPage County Health Department

Early efforts to form a health department failed. In 1925, a local health department is organized in DuPage County but was unsuccessful due to a lack of legal authority for counties to collect taxes for operating full-time health departments. World War II causes health concerns and the creation of health “defense zones” that later become health departments. DuPage, and 18 other Counties in Illinois, are assigned this status in March 1942, which is financed entirely and operated as a wartime expediency, with active support and cooperation from local officials. Local public health machinery is enlarged and expanded through state financial aid and given authority to function as county health departments.

In June 1943, without a dissenting vote in the Illinois Legislature, a bill, prepared by the State Department of Public Health (later known as the Searcy-Clabaugh law) authorized counties by referendum or by resolution of the county board (if no special tax were to be levied) to establish and maintain through special tax assessments, county and multiple-county health departments.

November 1,1944, the DuPage County Health Department is established through a referendum vote of 33,633 to 19,492. The main concerns of residents were the lack of countywide sanitation measures, and ordinances governing dairies and food vendors.

The DuPage County Health Department opens on March 13, 1945 in the DuPage County Courthouse, 201 Reber Street, Wheaton. James W. Chapman, M.D. is named the Director. With a budget of $39,000 and a staff of 15, the Health Department serves a mostly rural population of 125,000. One of the first acts of the new Board of Health was recommending enactment of five countywide sanitation ordinances: 1) Sanitary regulation of public water supplies; 2) Sewage disposal; 3) Garbage disposal; 4) Inspection of public swimming pools; and 5) Regulation of trailer parks.