As part of “Eight Forty-Eight’s” new Mayor Mondays series, the show will look back at the way Mayor Richard M. Daley’s tenure has affected certain aspects of city life and explore the challenges that the next mayor will face. The list of health issues facing Chicagoans is long and varied: childhood obesity, substance abuse, and limited access to health and mental health services. That Illinois, Cook County and Chicago all face overwhelming budget crises only makes things worse. For a long time reforming our health care system was the third rail of national politics.

That changed under President Obama, but the measures known as the Affordable Care Act won’t get fully underway until 2015.

And that leaves political players wondering what now?

Harold Pollack helped “Eight Forty-Eight” take the pulse of public health in Chicago. He’s the faculty chair at the Center for Health Administration Studies at the University of Chicago.

Music Button: Lord Newborn & the Magic Skulls, “Disco Loco”, from the CD Lord Newborn & the Magic Skulls, (Ubiquity)