Evanston’s Finance and Budget Committee will review a request Wednesday to expand the city’s planned Pathways to Wellness program aimed at improving health outcomes for underserved populations.
The program, first proposed in 2023 and approved in September 2024, was funded as a one-year pilot program in the amount of $400,000, but Ald. Bobby Burns (5th) is requesting the city allocate an additional $872,000 to expand the program to a three-year initiative.
The program stems from the city’s 2022 EPLAN, which shows a 13-year variation in life expectancy across Evanston neighborhoods. The lowest life expectancy was recorded in Census Tract 8092, in the western portion of the 5th Ward.
The program would be a “three-year, two-phase hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial” to be conducted in three of Evanston’s highest-need census tracts (8092, 8096 and 8102).
Dr. Elizabeth Lynch of Rush University Medical Center would lead the team of health professionals, alongside Neticia Blunt-Waldron of Evanston’s Whole Woman Fitness.
The city’s Human Services Committee voted last month to send the funding request to the Finance and Budget Committee for an additional review, with some alders concerned about the high price tag.
In a memo this week, Ike Ogbo, the city’s Human Services Director, wrote that the program is “not a pilot concept,” describing it as a “structured, evidence-based strategy with built-in accountability and rigorous evaluation.”
“It focuses on a single, measurable driver of premature death and applies proven interventions to the neighborhoods most affected,” Ogbo wrote.
Participants in the program must be Evanston residents, have uncontrolled hypertension and a household income of less than 250% of the federal poverty line (about $40,000 or less for a one-person household).
Last month, Ald. Krissie Harris (2nd) was especially skeptical of the program, saying she felt that “aspects of this that can be done in-house, with our own health department,” among other concerns.
“It is a really expensive ask in a year when we’re going to have to make some really tough budgetary decisions,” Ald. Shawn Iles (3rd) said on Mar. 3. “Before I vote at council, I want a better estimate of what it will look like to sustain it.”
From the original $400,000 allocation from the city’s Human Services fund, $56,000 has already been spent on program design, leaving $344,000 remaining. The new request would bring the total funding to $1.22 million, with roughly two-thirds of the money spent on a research component designed to measure the program’s effectiveness.
The City Council would get final approval of the program. Five of the nine alders sit on the city’s finance panel.