Mandatory disclosure, letter-grade systems, and corruption: The case of Los Angeles County restaurant inspections

The majority of local health departments perform routine restaurant inspections. In Los Angeles County (LAC), California, approximately $10 million/year is spent on restaurant inspections. However, data are limited as to whether or not certain characteristics of restaurants make them more likely to be associated with foodborne incident reports. We used data from the LAC Environmental Health Management Information System (EHMIS), which records the results of all routine restaurant inspections as well as data regarding all consumer-generated foodborne incidents that led to a special restaurant inspection by a sanitarian (investigated foodborne incidents [IFBIs]). We analyzed a cohort of 10,267 restaurants inspected from 1 July 1997 to 15 November 1997. We defined a “case restaurant” as any restaurant with a routine inspection from 1 July 1997 to 15 November 1997 and a subsequent IFBI from 1 July 1997 to 30 June 1998. Noncase restaurants did not have an IFBI from 1 July 1997 to 30 June 1998. We looked for specific characteristics of restaurants that might be associated with the restaurant subsequently having an IFBI, including the size of restaurant (assessed by number of seats), any previous IFBIs, the overall inspection score, and a set of 38 violation codes. We identified 158 case restaurants and 10,109 noncase restaurants. In univariate analysis, middle-sized restaurants (61 to 150 seats; n = 1,681) were 2.8 times (95% confidence interval [CI] = 2.0 to 4.0) and large restaurants (>150 seats; n = 621) were 4.6 times (95% CI = 3.0 to 7.0) more likely than small restaurants (≤60 seats; n = 7,965) to become case restaurants. In addition, the likelihood of a restaurant becoming a case restaurant increased as the number of IFBIs in the prior year increased (χ2 for linear trend, P value = 0.0005). Other factors significantly associated with the occurrence of an IFBI included a lower overall inspection score, the incorrect storage of food, the reuse of food, the lack of employee hand washing, the lack of thermometers, and the presence of any food protection violation. In multivariate analysis, the size of restaurant, the incorrect storage of food, the reuse of food, and the presence of any food protection violation remained significant predictors for becoming a case restaurant. Our data suggest that routine restaurant inspections should concentrate on those establishments that have a large seating capacity or a poor inspection history. Evaluation of inspection data bases in individual local health departments and translation of those findings into inspection guidelines could lead to an increased efficiency and perhaps cost-effectiveness of local inspection programs.

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Survey of selected personnel practices in Los Angeles County as of April 1, 1949. (Bull. No. 17.).

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e406822004-001 ◽

1949 ◽

Author(s):

Robert D. Gray

Keyword(s):

Los Angeles ◽

Los Angeles County ◽

Personnel Practices

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Community-Associated Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Infection Among Healthy Newborns--Chicago and Los Angeles County, 2004

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e503992006-001 ◽

2006 ◽

Keyword(s):

Staphylococcus Aureus ◽

Los Angeles ◽

Los Angeles County ◽

Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus ◽

Methicillin Resistant ◽

Aureus Infection

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Los Angeles County hospitals are limited in disaster preparedness and severely limited in surge capacity

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e596612007-030 ◽

2007 ◽

Keyword(s):

Los Angeles ◽

Disaster Preparedness ◽

Los Angeles County ◽

Surge Capacity

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The Sunland Grizzly

California History ◽

10.1525/ch.2014.91.4.56 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 91 (4) ◽

pp. 56-63

Author(s):

Josh Sides

Keyword(s):

Los Angeles ◽

Los Angeles County ◽

Southern California ◽

Grizzly Bear ◽

Science And Art ◽

Founding Director

In 1916, Cornelius Birket Johnson, a Los Angeles fruit farmer, killed the last known grizzly bear in Southern California and the second-to last confirmed grizzly bear in the entire state of California. Johnson was neither a sportsman nor a glory hound; he simply hunted down the animal that had been trampling through his orchard for three nights in a row, feasting on his grape harvest and leaving big enough tracks to make him worry for the safety of his wife and two young daughters. That Johnson’s quarry was a grizzly bear made his pastoral life in Big Tujunga Canyon suddenly very complicated. It also precipitated a quagmire involving a violent Scottish taxidermist, a noted California zoologist, Los Angeles museum administrators, and the pioneering mammalogist and Smithsonian curator Clinton Hart Merriam. As Frank S. Daggett, the founding director of the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science and Art, wrote in the midst of the controversy: “I do not recollect ever meeting a case where scientists, crooks, and laymen were so inextricably mingled.” The extermination of a species, it turned out, could bring out the worst in people.

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Unification and Its Discontents

California History ◽

10.1525/ch.2016.93.2.4 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 93 (2) ◽

pp. 4-16

Author(s):

Brian Kovalesky

Keyword(s):

Public Schools ◽

School District ◽

Los Angeles ◽

School Districts ◽

Civil Rights ◽

Working Class ◽

Los Angeles County ◽

The State ◽

White Working Class ◽

City Schools

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, during the height of protests and actions by civil rights activists around de facto school segregation in the Los Angeles area, the residents of a group of small cities just southeast of the City of Los Angeles fought to break away from the Los Angeles City Schools and create a new, independent school district—one that would help preserve racially segregated schools in the area. The “Four Cities” coalition was comprised of residents of the majority white, working-class cities of Vernon, Maywood, Huntington Park, and Bell—all of which had joined the Los Angeles City Schools in the 1920s and 1930s rather than continue to operate local districts. The coalition later expanded to include residents of the cities of South Gate, Cudahy, and some unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County, although Vernon was eventually excluded. The Four Cities coalition petitioned for the new district in response to a planned merger of the Los Angeles City Schools—until this time comprised of separate elementary and high school districts—into the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The coalition's strategy was to utilize a provision of the district unification process that allowed citizens to petition for reconfiguration or redrawing of boundaries. Unification was encouraged by the California State Board of Education and legislature in order to combine the administrative functions of separate primary and secondary school districts—the dominant model up to this time—to better serve the state's rapidly growing population of children and their educational needs, and was being deliberated in communities across the state and throughout Los Angeles County. The debates at the time over school district unification in the Greater Los Angeles area, like the one over the Four Cities proposal, were inextricably tied to larger issues, such as taxation, control of community institutions, the size and role of state and county government, and racial segregation. At the same time that civil rights activists in the area and the state government alike were articulating a vision of public schools that was more inclusive and demanded larger-scale, consolidated administration, the unification process reveals an often-overlooked grassroots activism among residents of the majority white, working-class cities surrounding Los Angeles that put forward a vision of exclusionary, smaller-scale school districts based on notions of local control and what they termed “community identity.”

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