Challenges and solutions to estimating tuberculosis disease incidence by country of birth in Los Angeles County

Abstract Background In Los Angeles County, the tuberculosis (TB) disease incidence rate is seven times higher among non-U.S.-born persons than U.S.-born persons and varies by country of birth. But translating these findings into public health action requires more granular information, especially considering that Los Angeles County is more than 4000 mile2. Local public health authorities may benefit from data on which areas of the county are most affected, yet these data remain largely unreported in part because of limitations of sparse data. We aimed to describe the spatial distribution of TB disease incidence in Los Angeles County while addressing challenges arising from sparse data and accounting for known cofactors. Methods Data on 5447 TB cases from Los Angeles County were combined with stratified population estimates available from the 2005–2011 Public Use Microdata Survey. TB disease incidence rates stratified by country of birth and Public Use Microdata Area were calculated and spatial smoothing was applied using a conditional autoregressive model. We used Bayesian Poisson models to investigate spatial patterns adjusting for age, sex, country of birth and years since initial arrival in the U.S. Results There were notable differences in the crude and spatially-smoothed maps of TB disease rates for high-risk subgroups, namely persons born in Mexico, Vietnam or the Philippines. Spatially-smoothed maps showed areas of high incidence in downtown Los Angeles and surrounding areas for persons born in the Philippines or Vietnam. Areas of high incidence were more dispersed for persons born in Mexico. Adjusted models suggested that the spatial distribution of TB disease could not be fully explained using age, sex, country of birth and years since initial arrival. Conclusions This study highlights areas of high TB incidence within Los Angeles County both for U.S.-born cases and for cases born in Mexico, Vietnam or the Philippines. It also highlights areas that had high incidence rates even when accounting for non-spatial error and country of birth, age, sex, and years since initial arrival in the U.S. Information on spatial distribution provided here complements other descriptions of local disease burden and may help focus ongoing efforts to scale up testing for TB infection and treatment among high-risk subgroups.

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First Report of Bamboo Rust Caused by Kweilingia divina on Bambusa domestica in Los Angeles County, California

Plant Disease ◽

10.1094/pdis-93-2-0201a ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 93 (2) ◽

pp. 201-201 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

C. L. Blomquist ◽

J. M. McKemy ◽

M. C. Aime ◽

R. W. Orsburn ◽

S. A. Kinnee

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Los Angeles ◽

Los Angeles County ◽

Disease Incidence ◽

Large Subunit ◽

Morphological Characteristics ◽

Nuclear Ribosomal Dna ◽

Sequence Information ◽

First Report ◽

Brownish Black

Elongate, interveinal, hypophyllous lesions were observed on bamboo plants (Bambusa domestica) during an inspection of a plant shipment in November of 2006 in Los Angeles County, CA. Disease incidence was 100%. Minute uredinia were spaced at regular intervals within each lesion. Urediniospores were pale tan, echinulate, and 18 to 29 × 16 to 23 μm with 1- to 1.5-μm walls. The urediniospores were surrounded and partially covered by incurved pale-to-brownish yellow paraphyses 34 to 45 × 12 μm with walls that were primarily thickened apically and dorsally to 5 μm. Several telia were observed forming inside old uredinia. Telia were brownish black, forming a flabellar head of teliospores fused laterally and in chains of three to six cells. Teliospores were chestnut brown, cuboidal to oblong, and measured 10 to 12.5 × 12.5 to 25 μm. DNA sequence of the 28S large subunit nuclear ribosomal DNA was obtained using previously published methods (1). The sequence deposited in GenBank as Accession No. EF192212 matched sequence No. DQ354554 (1), Kweilingia divina from Costa Rica (1), with 100% identity. On the basis of morphological characteristics (2) and sequence information, the rust was identified as K. divina (Syd.) Buriticá (= Dasturella divina (Syd.) Mundk. & Khesw.), causal agent of bamboo rust. Bamboo rust is widespread in parts of Asia but has also been found in Africa, Colombia, Brazil, Central America (3), and Australia (4). The shipment was traced to a foliage plant producer in Hawaii where the disease was subsequently found in the environment on the four major Hawaiian Islands of Oahu, Hawaii, Kauai, and Maui. All 10 bamboo plants received by the nursery were located and destroyed. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of bamboo rust occurring in California. References: (1) M. C. Aime. Mycoscience 47:112, 2006. (2) G. B. Cummins. Page 43 in: The Rust Fungi of Cereals, Grasses and Bamboos. Springer-Verlag, New York, 1971. (3) D. F. Farr et al. Fungal Databases, Systematic Mycology and Microbiology Laboratory. Online publication. ARS, USDA, year. (4) G. I. Johnson. Australas. Plant Pathol. 14:54, 1985.

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Helicobacter pylori and Gallstone Disease: Incidence and Outcomes in a Los Angeles County Population

Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery ◽

10.1007/s11605-021-04918-1 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 25 (4) ◽

pp. 887-889

Author(s):

Sonam Kapadia ◽

Amy H. Kaji ◽

Danielle M. Hari ◽

Junko Ozao-Choy ◽

Kathryn T. Chen

Keyword(s):

Helicobacter Pylori ◽

Los Angeles ◽

Los Angeles County ◽

Disease Incidence ◽

Gallstone Disease ◽

County Population

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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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