The Albert Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Tulane’s A. B. Freeman School of Business awarded six research grants as part of its Count the Costs initiative. From a funding pool of $120,000, grants in the amount of $20,000 support projects that investigate barriers BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) experience in society, the economic costs of those barriers and viable approaches to addressing them.
Motivated by findings of the Lepage Center’s 2020 Greater New Orleans Startup Report, which pointed to significant racial inequities in access to startup funding, the Freeman School set out to understand inequities across the business community and later expanded the project to highlight the BIPOC experience in a wide range of areas, such as public health, housing and criminal justice.
The projects selected to receive grants will present preliminary findings throughout the academic year 2022-23.
Past Presentations
A Conversation on Cultural Funding in New Orleans
Thursday, May 11, 2023 • 5:00-6:00 p.m. • Newcomb Art Museum, Tulane University
Miriam Taylor Fair and Alex Turvy, PhD students in Tulane's City + Culture + Community program, will share their research on the inequities of funding access for BIPOC artists and cultural organizations. There will be a panel discussion on the topic with Phoenix Rose, an entrepreneur, stylist and makeup artist; T. Ariana Hall, the Executive Director of CubaNOLA Arts Collective; Ifátùmínínú Bamgbàlà Aresà, multidisciplinary artist, activist and educator; Jeffery U. Darensbourg, a Tribal Councilperson of the Atakapa-Ishak Nation of Southwest Louisiana and Southeast Texas; and Denise Frazier, assistant director of the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University. Taylor Fair will moderate the panel.
The Costs of Blight Remediation: Homeownership and Gentrification in New Orleans
Recorded on Thursday, March 2, 2023 • 1:00-2:00 p.m.
Christopher Oliver and A.J. Golio from Tulane’s School of Liberal Arts and Isaac Hoeschen (SLA '21) from London's Tower Hamlets Council will discuss the relationship between urban policies focused on remediation of blighted buildings and rising housing costs associated with neighborhood gentrification for the next Count the Costs research presentation, "The Costs of Blight Remediation: Homeownership and Gentrification in New Orleans."
After Hurricane Katrina, the city of New Orleans adopted an aggressive blight remediation policy using code enforcement violations and liens. To assess the impact of these policies, Oliver, Golio and Hoeschen collected a dataset of properties in 10 New Orleans census tracts that received a code enforcement violation in 2017 along with a weighted control sample of similar properties in each tract. For their study, the researchers examine the market behavior of properties in both the treatment and control datasets, with the variation between the sale price and appraisal price of observed properties sold since the blight violation was issued acting as the primary variable of interest.
Severe Maternal Morbidity Among Louisiana Medicaid Recipients
Recorded on Thursday, August 18, 2022 • 12:00-1:00 p.m.
1440 Canal Street Room 1903
Madeline Woo and Kevin Callison, PhD, of Tulane’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, present their findings from calculating the rate of SMM for Medicaid recipients in Louisiana from 2013-2015. By calculating the excess cost of SMM births to the state of Louisiana’s Medicaid program, they will showcase the cost savings to Medicaid if inequalities between BIPOC patients and non-Hispanic white patients are reduced or eliminated.
Interventions to Improve Equity in Primary Care Access
Recorded on June 29, 2022 • 12:00-1:00 p.m.
Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine assistant professors Brigham Walker and Janna Wisniewski and professors Sarah Tinkler and Rajiv Sharma from Portland State University present their research with a Zoom discussion on “Interventions to Improve Equity in Primary Care Access."
