Quinn names doctor-activist to new public health post

Gov. Pat Quinn named Dr. Quentin Young, a long-time physician-activist, Illinois' Public Health Advocate at a press conference Saturday in Chicago's Thompson Center.

The position, created by Gov. Quinn last November, focuses on assisting residents in understanding health coverage provisions and helping Illinoisans better understand their public health rights. Dr. Young will receive a salary of $1 a year.

"We need to have somebody who can speak about this issue in plain language all across Illinois," Quinn said. "This is a labor of love. Dr. Quentin Young is really a natural resource for the people of the Land of Lincoln."

Dr. Young, 86, has previously served as the president of the American Public Health Association, president of the Physicians for a National Health Program and was founding member and Chairman of the Board of the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group. 

"I believe we undervalue and under-support our public health system," Young said. "And that's not unique in this state, unfortunately it's nationwide and it's at our peril."

"I'm going to do my very best to make the issues clear to the health care beneficiaries and the political leaders who have to make decisions."

Dr. Young's position will be housed within the greater Department of Public Health. The new post culminates a long-standing effort of Dr. Young's to improve public health standards and equality in health care overall. In 1951, Dr. Young founded the Committee to End Discrimination in Chicago Medical Institutions, which led to the desegregation of Chicago hospitals. Later, Dr. Young would serve as personal physician to Martin Luther King Jr. during his stay in Chicago and marched beside him in a 1966 protest.

Young highlighted the "epidemic of obesity," and the flight of primary care physicians toward more profitable specialty areas of medicine as current problems needed to be dealt with to ensure Illinois' life-expectancy and overall health statistics don't decline in the coming years.

Quinn and Young go back a long way together. In the summer of 2001, Dr. Young , then 78, walked with Quinn across the state from Rock Island to Lake Michigan to promote better health care and healthier lifestyles for everyone in Illinois.

"One thing that we found along the way of our walk was how many people were interested in the issue of health care and putting caring back into health care, and they were particularly interested in the importance of public health."  Quinn said. "Public health is about all of us."