Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Olusimbo Ige has resigned from her position, the mayor’s office confirmed Friday.
Fikirte Wagaw, the CDPH first deputy commissioner, will serve as acting commissioner, according to a spokesperson for Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office, who added that the mayor “will work expeditiously to identify a permanent replacement.”
A source familiar with the matter confirmed Friday that Johnson had asked for Ige’s resignation, which is effective immediately.
“Today, Mayor Johnson accepted Dr. Ige’s letter of resignation. We thank her for her expertise and years of service as Commissioner for the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH),” a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said in a statement.
Ige is a public health expert — trained in medicine in Nigeria, where she grew up, and not licensed to practice in the U.S. Before taking the Chicago job, she worked for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Before that, she served as an assistant commissioner at New York City’s health department.
Johnson chose her from among four finalists produced by a nationwide search led by a committee that included former Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike; Dr. Wayne H. Giles, dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Dr. David Ansell, a high-ranking official at Rush University Medical Center; and Arturo Carrillo, who at the time was deputy director for health and violence prevention at the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council.
Carrillo is now the city’s deputy mayor for health and human services. Reached by the Sun-Times Friday evening, he had no comment on Ige’s departure.
Ige was announced as public health commissioner by Johnson in November 2023 just months after the mayor fired Dr. Allison Arwady, a pediatrician and infectious diseases expert who led the city through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Arwady also had clashed with the Chicago Teachers Union for opening Chicago Public Schools during the pandemic earlier than the union wanted them to open without the protections the CTU had demanded.
Arwady’s firing came as no surprise. Johnson was a paid organizer of the CTU who owed his election to the millions of dollars contributed by the union and the hundreds of foot soldiers the group and its affiliates provided.
Like Ige, Arwady was fired late on a Friday.