Dr. Ngozi Ezike

First Friday Club of Chicago podcast

A confident, reassuring presence during Gov. Pritzker’s daily covid briefings, Dr. Ngozi Ezike in 2022 left the Illinois Department of Public Health to lead Sinai Chicago. And, while steering this major, 105-year-old Chicago healthcare institution, she’s keeping her eye on the broader picture.

“Understanding health care is more than what happens with doctors and nurses,” she says. “We have to see the related other pieces: having insurance, having a safe space to exercise, having a grocery store nearby so you can buy healthy food. We’re in the minority among developed nations in how we don’t see health care as a right. Instead there are haves and have nots.”

Located on Chicago’s West Side, Sinai Hospital offers a case in point: 70% of its patients are on Medicaid. West Siders’ life expectancy is 16 years shorter than that of folks who live just a few miles away in the Loop. Ezike insists that this status quo is simply not acceptable. “More people need to be thinking about this,” she says. “Our words and our actions really have to match.”

As a healthcare leader who has dedicated her career to serving disadvantaged communities and fighting health care disparities, Ezike will point to the bigger picture of how we can work together to ensure decent healthcare for all Chicagoans.

Raised in Los Angeles and a mother of four, Dr. Ezike credits her husband, Dr. Emeka Ezike and her faith in a higher power for helping her deal with the stress from her jobs, especially during the pandemic. A graduate of Harvard, Dr. Ezike worked for 15 years for Cook County Health, addressing the needs of the residents of Cook County. She also served as medical director of the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center and of Austin Health Center on the West Side.