The University of Illinois System doesn’t just study public health. It practices it.

The pressures on Illinois families are not abstract. Nearly 2 million Illinoisans relied on SNAP benefits in 2024, and an estimated 360,000 are now at risk of losing eligibility under new federal work requirements. One in five Chicago-area households already experiences food insecurity, federal funding for environmental monitoring, community health programs, and public health research is contracting, and the safety net millions of families depend on is being stress-tested in ways not seen in a generation. The consequences are not evenly distributed. The communities absorbing the most pressure are the same ones that have historically had the least access to care, the least access to nutritious food, and the fewest resources to weather the disruption.

This is not a distant ambition dressed up in a mission statement. Across its three universities, the U of I System has positioned health and wellbeing not as a byproduct of education, but as one of its central obligations to the people of Illinois and one of its greatest opportunities to lead.

Research with a mandate

The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) pulled in more than $490 million in research funding in fiscal year 2025, a 27% increase since 2019, spanning maternal health, environmental science, aging, food and nutrition policy, and community health equity. Carle Illinois College of Medicine at UIUC, the world’s first engineering-based college of medicine, is training physicians who can deploy advanced technology in service of more equitable, more human care. At the University of Illinois Springfield (UIS), researchers are studying cancer at the cellular level and investigating whether a common diabetes medication may also protect cardiovascular health, with undergraduate and graduate students working alongside faculty in the lab.

This is research with a specific mandate. Not just to publish. To change things.

Access to care: raising the floor

UI Health delivered more than 1.5 million patient visits in fiscal year 2025. Its 11 federally qualified Mile Square Health Centers served more than 158,000 patients in communities historically underserved by the broader healthcare system. UIC’s Office of Population Health Sciences has named its purpose plainly: while many institutions focus on raising the ceiling in healthcare, OPHS is dedicated to raising the floor.

That principle has produced tangible results. When UIC researchers discovered that stocking schools with inhalers could dramatically reduce emergency asthma events, they drove policy. The program they piloted reduced 911 calls by 20% and EMS transports by 40%, and ultimately led to a $2.4 million state appropriation stocking more than 3,100 public schools with life-saving medication. Science became a statute.

Mental health is treated with the same seriousness. UIC has committed nearly $4.5 million to expand student mental health resources and is pursuing designation as a World Health Organization Health Promoting University, where mental wellbeing is embedded in institutional policy, not treated as an ancillary service.

Food, environment, and the full picture of health

Health begins before anyone walks through a clinic door. It starts with the water Illinois communities drink, the air their children breathe, and the land that feeds them. The system’s Illinois Water Resources Center anchors statewide water science, developing technologies to detect and treat contaminants and helping regions build resilience against climate variability. UIC’s Center for Extreme Conditions and Health Excellence is developing strategies to understand and mitigate the health effects of flooding, pollution, and heat in the Chicago neighborhoods where those pressures are most acute.

On food, the system invests across the full chain. The I-FARM initiative, a $3.9 million USDA-funded agricultural testbed, is developing regenerative farming practices with direct implications for what ends up on Illinois tables. The Institute of Government and Public Affairs is studying how Medicaid continuity shapes health outcomes for the more than 3.6 million Illinois residents the program serves. At the U of I System, evidence does not stop at the journal. It goes to Springfield.

The case for investment

Illinois is the fifth-largest economy in the United States and one of the world’s most consequential food producers. The U of I System received more than $325 million in NIH-funded research in fiscal year 2024 alone, producing advances from novel antibiotics to Long COVID treatments. That investment does not just support a university. It supports hospitals, clinics, farms, and families across Illinois and well beyond its borders.

Sustained public investment in the system’s health research mission is not a line item to be reconsidered. It is a strategic imperative. Every dollar directed toward U of I System health research returns to Illinois in the form of treatments developed, policies improved, jobs created, and lives extended. Illinois research is Illinois infrastructure. And like all infrastructure, it requires protection, investment, and the long-term commitment it has earned.

The system’s record on health and wellbeing is one of the strongest arguments for what public higher education can do when given the resources and the mandate to lead. That partnership between the system, the state, and the communities it serves is what makes the work possible. And the work is only beginning.