In 2011 the city of Flint decided to begin sourcing its water from Lake Huron, ending a purchasing arrangement it had with the city of Detroit. In the interim, it began drawing water from the Flint River. This switch was expected to save the city $5 million over two years. However, the city failed to […]
Author Archives: Fred Zimmerman
When people make decisions about health—their own or the public’s—they’re not thinking rationally, and that’s a very good thing. The standard model of decision-making in economics and elsewhere claims that people have stable preferences and perfect information about the world, and that they rationally choose actions that maximize the match between the world and their […]
As a couple of sharp-eyed commenters pointed out, I wasn’t clear in my previous post on a gasoline floor price. The idea would be to set a tax equal to the difference between the market price and the floor price whenever the market equilibrium price is below the floor. If the market price is […]
13
Jan
Jan
On Streetsblog, Charles Komanoff makes a number of great points about the low price of gasoline driving more C02 emissions, and endorses Congressional proposals for a carbon tax on the order of $100/ton, which would raise gasoline prices by about $1.00/gallon. Elsewhere Komanoff says, “the climate problem cannot be solved without carbon emission fees,” by which […]
Gas prices are down to around $3 a gallon and that’s a disaster. But worse is yet to come. In the US there is no way to get to meaningful reductions without changing the transportation sector, which accounts for 27% of greenhouse gas emissions. Strategies to combat climate change can be thought of […]
08
Jan
Jan
Grades work. Under the leadership of then-Director Jonathan Fielding, the Los Angeles Department of Public Health pioneered a letter-grade system for restaurant sanitation. The program has been a tremendous success, imitated throughout the country and now to Europe. Following the introduction of restaurant letter grades, restaurant hygiene increased dramatically and the incidence of food-borne illness […]
Check back on Jan. 4th for the next blog!
21
Dec
Dec
This entertaining two-minute video explains why parking is one of the most important parts of the context of urban health. UCLA professor Don Shoup has been beating this drum for years, although not so much from a health angle. Sometimes the simplest regulations—that every home and commercial space has to come with parking—have the deepest impacts. […]
Wilshire Boulevard has a new bus-only lane, but it’s bus-only in name only. Until the City gets serious about enforcement, perhaps the bus-only lane should be known by a more descriptive name: the bus, bike and asshole lane. Cars routinely drive in the bus lane during bus-only/bike-only hours and enforcement is non-existent. Most drivers respect […]
The third era is an exciting time to be in public health. It means not just badgering individuals about their health behaviors, but working across sectors to ensure the conditions in which people can pursue health. And it recognizes health as a resource for everyday living. But while the third era of public health has […]