Monica Hendrickson

The new Peoria County Health & Human Services building opens to the public this week.

After two years of messy groundwork, any and all efforts to launch Cure Violence Global's gun violence prevention program in Peoria are dead. How it ended up that way depends who you ask.

The next step for the Cure Violence program in Peoria: find a community based organization to partner with the violence prevention group and the Peoria City/County Health Department.

The results of the Cure Violence Global Readiness Assessment appear to point toward the impending implementation of the program in Peoria.

Updated figures on the Illinois Department of Public Health website show Peoria, Tazewell and Woodford counties with 20 deaths credited to the pandemic since Oct. 13.

The 2022 Community Health Needs Assessment identifies three major public health issues in the Tri-County area.

According to the 2022 Community Needs Health Assessment survey, the percentage of people reporting “poor” mental health doubled in the past three years to 16%.

Peoria, Tazewell, and Woodford counties are all classified at a high community transmission level for COVID-19. But Peoria City/County Health Department Administrator Monica Hendrickson doesn’t foresee a return to strict measures to reduce the spread.

Peoria City/County Health Department administrator Monica Hendrickson says the county has averaged more than 300 new cases per day over the past few weeks.

Regional Superintendent of Schools Beth Crider said school districts are going to adhere to the latest guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reducing the number of days in isolation from 10 to five.