In Brief: Los Angeles County Will Merge Three Health Agencies; Statewide Smoking Rate Continues to Drop
Los Angeles County Will Merge Three Health Agencies
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 earlier this week to merge three departments that provide different healthcare services into a single entity in order to streamline care delivery.
The Supervisors voted to merge the Department of Health Services, the Department of Public Health and the Department of Mental Health. They have combined annual budgets of nearly $8 billion and account for more than a quarter of all Los Angeles County public expenditures.
Mitchell Katz, M.D., the mostly low-key director of Health Services, is considered the leading candidate to run the combined agency. Katz had urged the Supervisors in correspondence to merge the three agencies.
The Department of Mental Health was created as its own agency in 1978, while Public Health was spun off from DHS and became its own entity about a decade ago.
The Board of Supervisors has come under criticism for undertaking much of the discussion about the merger outside of public view, but went ahead with the plan anyway.
The merger was originally floated by Supervisor Michael Antonovich, the board’s most politically conservative member, although Tuesday’s vote indicated it had bipartisan support. Term limits will force Antonovich out of his seat next year after 36 years in office.
The three departments will draft formal plans in the coming months regarding how the merger will be executed.
Smoking Rates Decline Statewide While E-Cigarette Use Skyrockets
California's smoking rate has continued to decline in recent years, but the number of adults statewide who admit to puffing on electronic cigarettes has been rising swiftly, while the rate of smokeless tobacco consumption has been holding steady.
According to a new report by the California Department of Public Health, the number of adult residents who smoke was at 11.7% in 2013, down about a percentage point from 2012, and down more than 50% from the late 1980s, when 23.7% of residents smoked cigarettes.
But users of e-cigarettes – electronic devices that dispense nicotine vapor – nearly doubled between 2012 to 2013, from 1.8% to 3.5%. Usage skyrocketed among California adults under the age of 25, rising from 2.2% to 8.6% in a single year.
Smokeless tobacco usage has remained steady among adults at around 2%, rising after a decline in 2008 to about 1% of the population.
Demographically, men in California are far more likely to smoke than women (15.1% versus 8.5%), while African-American men are more likely to smoke than other groups (18.9% in 2011, the most recent year for which data was available). Those with incomes below the federal poverty level smoke at much higher rates (18.2%) than those with incomes of 300% and above the poverty level (10.4%). Twenty-two percent of vocational school graduates smoke, compared to 8.3% of college graduates and 5.1% who have attended graduate school.
