Reporter finds the story behind food code violations
Filed under: Government, Health data, Health journalism, Hot Health Headline, Public health, Public records
All the time that The Muskegon Chronicle’s Brian McVicar has been spending with his county health department’s inspection records has paid off with a slew of stories, with the most recent turning the spotlight on the thousands of food code violations area businesses have racked up in recent years.
Photo by bookgrl via FlickrFor this particular story, McVicar crunched the numbers on 22,000 violations, 37 percent of them critical, logged over a four-year period. Among the most salient, he writes, were “Raw chicken and crabmeat sitting out at room temperature, food kept past its expiration date, cockroaches, mice and fruit flies living in kitchens, employees not following proper hand washing procedures.”
In addition to the typical rogue restaurants, McVicar found that a wide range of local businesses were guilty of health code violations, including “Schools, hospitals, and food stands found in places such as Michigan’s Adventure Amusement Park.”
With his broad-based, data-oriented methodology, McVicar provides a model for other local reporters looking to move beyond the typical “cherrypick the cockroach horror stories” approach that is so often found in inspection-record stories.
Stories in the series:
- Food code violations rampant; food poisoning outbreaks rare
- Management is key to cleaning up food code violations
- Handwashing, temperature storage key to keeping foods safe
- Are some restaurants allowed to get too many health violations?
- Day in the life of a Muskegon County health inspector
- Food poisoning outbreaks rare, but serious
- Some states grade restaurants based on health inspections
- Food code violations: Public health risk or over-burdensome government regulation?
Why Detroit’s emergency services are lagging
The Detroit News‘ Charlie LeDuff tried to figure out his city’s abysmal ambulance response times, and had a tough time finding excuses for why they are so far behind the national average, though staffing cuts and budget shortages certainly played a role. He wears his frustration on his sleeve and the article’s brutally incisive as a result. I’ll do my best to summarize, but it’s certainly worth a read.
One problem, according to a 2004 city audit of the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) system, is that Detroit is the only major American city that does not allow a firefighter or a police officer to aid a victim before the ambulance arrives. Another problem is substandard communication equipment. Since that report was issued, at least two hospitals have closed and the EMS system has been decimated by staffing cuts causing ambulances to drive farther.
The national standard for ambulance response is eight minutes, and some Detroit suburbs have it down around five. Nobody’s sure how long Detroit ambulances take, but it’s clear that it’s well beyond the acceptable threshold. Fire Commissioner James Mack Jr. said the departments doing the best it can to maximize resources amid budget constraints, LeDuff reports.
Mack made a claim to Fox 2 News a few weeks ago that the average response time in Detroit for an ambulance to arrive on a 911 call is 12 minutes — even while admitting that often there are no units available to get to calls.
According to that 2004 audit, the two-year average at that time was about 12 minutes. And that was before the city cut its paramedics and emergency medical technicians by nearly 40 percent.
As school starts, so do youth sports injuries
Filed under: Children, Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
The University of Michigan’s new Michigan NeuroSport Concussion Program seems to be cropping up everywhere, and as far as I can tell, it’s all part of a coordinated effort by the University. They already claim to have one of the only pediatric sport programs in the country, and now they’re expanding it with a clinical and research focus on “neurological sports injuries.”
In related news, the latest CDC Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report includes an analysis of the numbers for “Heat Illness Among High School Athletes” from 2005 to 2009. The study examined 100 schools and nine sports, and found that heat-related illness was most common in football, and that August was the worst month for such afflictions.
AHCJ has a rich pool of resources for journalists looking to report beyond the press releases on stories like these, including:
Tip sheets
Concussions in young athletes
Reporting on sports injuries in school-age children
Health and education: Two intersecting beats
Health and education: Reporting resources
Blog posts
Tougher concussion rules from high school assn.
GAO evaluates youth concussion databases
Concussion more likely when hit is unexpected (Youth hockey study)
Attention focuses on football’s neurological effects
AP story: Hundreds of PTSD soldiers likely misdiagnosed
U. of Michigan president sits on pharma board
On The New York Times Prescriptions blog, Duff Wilson reports that while her school has taken a lead in limiting conflicts of interest, University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman herself sits on the board of Johnson & Johnson, a post which earns her $229,978 each year. Her defense is that she’s openly disclosed the relationship, and that the world of pharma and that of university administration rarely intersect.
Responding to questions on Ms. Coleman’s behalf Monday, Kelly E. Cunningham, a spokeswoman for the university, said the president satisfied the policy by disclosing her outside work. Ms. Coleman has never had to recuse herself from any discussion or action at the university because medical purchasing and investment decisions are so remote from her, Ms. Cunningham said.
“The same is true at J&J,” she added. “There has never been a discussion or decision at the board level that involved something related to the UM. But, of course, if there were, she would recuse herself.”
It’s not uncommon for university presidents to sit on corporate boards, Wilson found, but it appears that pharmaceutical companies are a special case given the major role universities play in medical research and health care delivery.
Thomas Donaldson, a corporate governance expert and professor of business ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, reviewed the case on Monday for The Times. He said many university presidents serve on corporate boards, but biomedical company boards pose special issues because of the possible ties to university research and medical schools.
“Because of the role of research and also the entrepreneurial interest that lies behind a lot of modern advances in medicine, this is a very difficult issue,” Professor Donaldson said in a telephone interview. “We’ve been aware for decades really that this potential for conflict of interest exists, but we haven’t as a moral community or even inside universities gotten our arms around it yet.”
Lead poisoning hurts Detroit kids’ academics
Detroit Free Press reporters Tina Lam and Kristi Tanner-White report that data compiled by the city shows that “More than half of the students tested in Detroit Public Schools have a history of lead poisoning, which affects brain function for life.” Lead poisoning is bad news, but it gets much worse:
Now, a landmark study by the city health department and Detroit Public Schools of lead data and test scores shows that the higher the lead level, the worse a student’s scores on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program exam, or MEAP.
Overall, 58% of roughly 39,000 DPS students tested – 22,755 children – had a history of lead poisoning, according to the study.
Perhaps more startling: Of the 39,199 students tested as young children, only 23 had no lead in their bodies.
There are confounding factors, of course, but this chart shows the correlation between lead exposure and weaker academic skills. It’s yet another blow for a school district whose students were already some of the worst performing in the nation.
The story ran with an excellent graphic on lead poisoning levels throughout the city over time, as well as a school-by-school database of lead poisoning statistics.
Barriers in 5 Midwest states chill public access
A study from the the Citizen Advocacy Center finds that open government laws in Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota have systemic barriers that chill public participation and access to government.
The Center analyzed each state’s Freedom of Information and Open Meetings Acts and found striking similarities between all states, including:
- Open government laws are sporadically enforced, which means public bodies are more likely to be unresponsive to records requests and employ exemptions to keep meetings closed.
- No state surveyed has a government office with statutory authority specifically created to oversee and enforce sunshine laws.
- State employees are not adequately trained to carry out open government policies and may be unintentionally violating the laws.
- Citizens may be able to attend meetings, but there are very few opportunities to participate.
The Midwest Open Goverment Project is a comprehensive study of the Freedom of Information and Open Meetings Acts in those five states, under the auspices of the Citizen Advocacy Center.
Regional health reform forum webcast from Mich.
The forum starts at 2 p.m. ET and will be streamed live.
This is the first of five regional forums that were announced by President Obama last week. They are intended to continue the public discussion about bringing down health care costs and making coverage more widely available. The president said:
“The forums will bring together diverse groups of people all over the country who have a stake in reforming our health care system and ask them to put forward their best ideas about how we bring down costs and expand coverage for American families.”
The other four events have been scheduled:
- March 17 in Burlington, Vt.
- March 23 in Des Moines, Iowa
- March 31 in Greensboro, N.C.
- April 6 in Los Angeles
Check HealthReform.gov for more details.
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Join us in Atlanta
for Health Journalism 2012
Fellowship applications
due Feb. 27
New at HealthJournalism.org
- Data gives depth to investigation of patient safety
- What reporters should know about Alzheimer’s and related dementias
- Apply for fellowships to attend Health Journalism 2012
- AHCJ asks Supreme Court to permit broadcast of arguments in health reform case
- Tips for print, online journalists to embrace broadcast opportunities
- Numbers reveal how often, or how rarely, states check doctors’ disciplinary records
- How I did it: Falsified charts in nursing homes linked to patient care
- Access Denied: Looking at a lack of health care availability
- Transparency & medical errors: Public reporting of patient harm is a potent force
