The City Council Committee on Health and Human Relations on Wednesday will consider an appointment to the Chicago Board of Health and hold a subject matter hearing on the public health department’s strategies to reduce deaths from drug overdose and gun violence. 

The health and human relations committee will meet at 10 a.m. in council chambers.

First, the committee will consider the appointment of Dr. Anuj K. Shah to the board of health. Shah is a family physician for Tapestry 360 Health, a federally qualified health center on the North Side. He previously worked for Erie Family Health Center in Humboldt Park and graduated from Loyola’s Stritch School of Medicine and earned his master's in public health from the University of Illinois-Chicago, according to a biographical page on Tapestry 360’s website. 

If approved, Shah will serve for a three-year, staggered term, like all members of the nine-member board. He would fill the board’s final vacant slot.

The other eight board appointments were approved by the committee in March and City Council in April. 

Related: Health and Human Relations Committee approves Board of Health appointments, expansion of city anti-discrimination code  

Additionally, the committee will hold a subject matter hearing on the Chicago Department of Public Health’s (CDPH) strategies for public health and safety over the summer. 

On Friday, CDPH announced some of its strategies to combat the rise in gun violence and opioid overdoses, which the department said increase from May through August in the city each year.  

“Opioid overdoses and gun violence are public health crises in need of focused interventions, particularly as they peak seasonally, and are geographically concentrated in Chicago,” the department said in a news release.  

The department’s strategy to counter the seasonal peak focuses on outreach to the areas most impacted to provide education, resources and connections to care organizations. 

CDPH said it will build off the successes it experienced fighting the opioid epidemic last summer, when it deployed an interagency and interorganizational Summer Opioid Response Incident Command Structure. The department said the strategy, which focused on five “hotspots” on the West Side, correlated with a 44 percent drop in opioid overdose deaths year-over-year compared to 2023. 

The strategy will expand to the South Side this summer, CDPH said, while also adding in violence prevention efforts.

“Following our success in bringing down opioid overdoses requiring emergency responses in 2024, CDPH aims to expand its efforts to 27 communities on the South and West Sides of Chicago in 2025 to address the dual public health crises of opioid overdoses and firearm violence,” CDPH Comm. Olusimbo Ige said in a statement. “By deploying evidence-based interventions and centering people and their wellness, we hope to accelerate progress towards our goal of reducing preventable deaths.” 

The violence prevention work will include the deployment of hundreds of peacekeepers, gun safety workshops, distribution of gun locks and safe space activations that allow communities to safely gather and socialize.