NORMAL – State Senator Dave Koehler joined the Illinois Capital Development Board and the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services in announcing millions in in funding to improve health outcomes, including over $20 million in funding to an organization serving the district he represents.

“Young people deserve access to high-quality health care, including specialized services like behavioral health or psychiatry, no matter their ZIP code,” said Koehler (D-Peoria). This investment will greater health outcomes for young people in our community.”

The Healthcare Transformation Capital Improvement grants will build on HFS’ equity-driven Healthcare Transformation Collaboratives program, which was established in 2021. The goals of the HTC program are to expand access to care and improve health equity, especially in underserved communities, by leveraging shared resources among collaborative partners to create locally-driven solutions.

SPRINGFIELD – State Senator Dave Koehler and the members of the Underground Railroad Task Force put forth their statewide plan to connect existing local projects and new projects to create a cohesive history of the Underground Railroad in Illinois, while establishing new educational and tourism opportunities.

“Despite nationwide efforts to restrict education about our country’s history of racism, Illinois remains committed to shining a light on our past so we can move forward,” said Koehler (D-Peoria). “Our bipartisan initiative will shed light on Illinois’ historic ties to the Underground Railroad, and honor the brave individuals who fought against slavery and oppression so many years ago.” 

The task force – created through legislation led by Koehler – has spent the last year meeting to devise a strategy for sharing, growing and celebrating the history of the Underground Railroad in Illinois.

SPRINGFIELD – As the lead sponsor of the nation’s first law protecting child influencers from financial exploitation, State Senator Dave Koehler is celebrating California joining Illinois in passing legislation ensuring young content creators will earn fair financial compensation for the use of their image.

“Children everywhere deserve to be protected from exploitation on social media—not just those who live in our state,” said Koehler (D-Peoria). “I am excited to see California follow Illinois’ example by codifying protections for kid influencers and establishing guidelines so the young people featured will be able to access money they earned from this content as they get older.”

Earlier this year, Koehler’s measure, Senate Bill 1782, went into effect. The law requires parents or guardians that feature a minor in at least 30% of their content that is earning at least $0.10 per view to create a trust account for the minor, where they will deposit at least half of the earnings made from a video the minor is featured in. The initiative was championed by a high school student in Koehler’s district, Shreya Nallamothu, who noticed child influencers going viral on social media and was concerned that their parents could be pocketing all of the profits from the child’s content creation.

PEORIA – State Senator Dave Koehler secured nearly $250,000 to enhance four adult library and literacy programs in Peoria and Bloomington.

“In the current information age, strengthening your literacy and comprehension skills is more important than ever,” said Koehler (D-Peoria). “This grant funding will ensure local programs can continue to offer programs to improve literacy, which can be transformative for people in our district and our community as a whole.”

The grants were awarded by Illinois Secretary of State and State Librarian Alexi Giannoulias, who has awarded nearly $22 million for library services and $6 million for literacy programs throughout the state.

The goal of these grants is to enhance online catalogues, support day-to-day operations, expand interlibrary loan programs and equip vision-impaired individuals with narrations of newspaper content. The literacy grants are designed to promote basic reading, math, writing and English language skills.