The John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation has awarded a $1.5 million grant to USC Price School researchers to help Los Angeles County government develop tools to measure — and ultimately help improve — residents’ wellbeing.
The 18-month project will be headed by Professor David Brady and Research Assistant Professor Jared Schachner, with the goal of developing a transparent system for tracking county government’s progress in measuring outcomes related to resident wellbeing. The new system will be designed with input from county residents, county government departments, and community stakeholders.
The project comes as L.A. County overhauls its government following the 2024 approval of ballot Measure G. The county is creating an elected county executive position, an independent ethics commission, and a nonpartisan legislative analyst. The measure will also expand the Board of Supervisors from five members to nine and implement a number of other changes aimed at improving government accountability and transparency.
This project is made possible by a grant from The Haynes Foundation Fund for Los Angeles Public Policy Research, a donor-advised fund of the California Community Foundation. The Haynes Foundation is a 100-year-old institution dedicated to advancing effective governance and a more inclusive democracy across the Los Angeles region. The Foundation first proposed this form of county governance reform in 1976 through a Foundation-supported citizen commission.
USC Price School researchers will focus on resident wellbeing in assessing government performance, identifying key measures that can be tracked over time and plausibly linked to the work of county government departments. Examples of potential measures include outcomes for resident physical and mental health, safety, economic security, and housing stability.
“As L.A. County government undergoes a historic restructuring under Measure G, there is also a critical opportunity to rethink how government performance is defined and measured,” Brady and Schachner, the principal investigators, said in a joint statement. “Our goal is to put resident wellbeing at the center of that effort—not just tracking government activities and service delivery but continuously assessing whether county departments are contributing to meaningful improvements in residents’ lives and how those contributions can be strengthened.”
“Measure G promised the community that there would be greater accountability for county government,” said Dr. Raphael Sonenshein, Executive Director of the Haynes Foundation. “After 2028, the new elected executive, the board of supervisors, and the departments will be called upon to deliver on that promise. It’s essential to get ahead of that curve by developing outcome measures today that will allow both the community and the county government to see and assess progress, obstacles, and milestones in ways that are visible and impactful.”
County departments already track service data, such as processing times, enrollment numbers, and service completion rates. But those measures don’t necessarily show whether residents’ lives are getting better, the researchers noted. The research team will work with county departments to identify potential outcome measures that reflect resident wellbeing and are feasible to track over time. Surveys of county residents and community engagement sessions will help determine which outcomes residents consider most important to their wellbeing and how those outcomes can be communicated clearly to the public.
The resulting measures will inform a public-facing dashboard for tracking county departments’ progress in contributing to resident wellbeing over time, along with recommendations for incorporating this outcomes-based approach into county governance.
In addition to Brady and Schachner, the research team features faculty from all four Price School academic departments, as well as Price-affiliated research centers and alumni.
The team includes:
- Professor David Brady
- Assistant Professor (Research) Jared Schachner
- Professor (Research) Adam Rose
- Provost Professor Jeffery Jenkins,
- Professor Marlon Boarnet,
- Professor Rosalie Pacula,
- Professor (Teaching) Michael Thom
- Assistant Professor Danyao Li
- Caroline Bhalla, Director of Civic Engagement at the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, which includes the Neighborhood Data for Social Change initiative;
- Kyla Thomas, Director of L.A. Barometer and Sociologist at the USC Center for Economic and Social Research;
- Master of Public Policy and Urban Planning alumnus Nathaniel Gundersen, now Senior Consultant at Buro Happold.
