New Orleans Research Articles

The Catastrophe to Come: Prefiguring Hurricane Katrina’s Public Memory through the Anxious Melancholic Rhetoric of “the Big One”

AbstractThe city of New Orleans has long narrated its own demise through reference to “the Big One,” a singular hurricane that would destroy the city for good. The “catastrophe to come” is a more or less permanent spectral presence for many of its residents, evidence of which can be traced as far back as the city’s founding in 1718. When it comes to memorialization of Katrina, the central question of this essay is: how does one analyze public memory of an event so thoroughly anticipated, indeed, whose historical anticipation is fundamental to the later memory of it? Rather than merely acting as the historical context within which public memory comes to be interpreted, this anticipation and the anxiety that marks its form figures directly into the reading of the later memory object itself. In this essay, I argue that the repeated narrativization of the Big One is an anxious rhetoric that prefigures post-Katrina memory objects through a process of melancholic rhetorical incorporation. I first engage the history of New Orleans and this anxiety, extrapolating my usage of anxiety and melancholy as rhetorical concepts along the way. Then, I tender a critical analysis that first reads two narratives of such destruction to describe memory’s prefiguration and then turns symmetrically to two post-Katrina memory objects to demonstrate the work of incorporation in the production of memory objects.

Resistance to commonly used insecticides and underlying mechanisms of resistance in Aedes aegypti (L.) from Sri Lanka

BackgroundDrastic increases of dengue fever (DF) over the past few years have prompted studies on the development of resistance to insecticides in the mosquito vector, Aedes aegypti (Linnaeus). In Sri Lanka control of the vector population is essentially achieved using larvicides (temephos) and adulticides (principally pyrethroids). The present study investigates resistance to commonly used insecticides and underlying mechanisms of Ae. aegypti in selected sites in Sri Lanka.MethodsIn this study, susceptibility to three commonly used adulticides (malathion, permethrin and deltamethrin) and the larvicide temephos were tested for Ae. aegypti sampled from five localities in Sri Lanka using WHO dose diagnostics tests. In addition, we performed dose-response tests for permethrin to determine lethal concentrations (LCs) with CDC bottle bioassays. An assessment of the activity of metabolic detoxifying enzymes (multifunction oxidases (MFOs), glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) and esterases) and determination of frequency of the kdr mutations (F1534C, V1016G and S989P) were also carried out to ascertain the associated resistance mechanisms. Kdr genotype frequencies were compared with samples collected from the same sites in 2015 to determine the change of allele frequencies over the years.ResultsThe present study revealed resistance in all Ae. aegypti populations studied, with low mortality percentages for both permethrin (10–89%) and deltamethrin (40–92%). Dose response tests revealed highest resistance ratios (RR) for permethrin and temephos from Colombo district whereas Puttalum district exhibited the lowest. High frequencies of the 1534C allele (0.052–0.802) were found in the study sites in 2017. Comparison with samples collected in 2015 revealed a substantial increase in this allele. The activity of MFOs and p-nitro phenyl-acetate esterase was significantly greater in most Sri Lankan populations in comparison to that of the New Orleans (NO) susceptible strain. In contrast, the activity of α-esterase and β-esterase was similar or lower than that in the NO strain.ConclusionsAedes aegypti from Sri Lanka is resistant to pyrethroid insecticides showing rapid selection for kdr mutations and varying metabolic mechanisms. Continued monitoring of vector populations is crucial to mitigate the development of resistance to commonly used insecticides and in turn, controlling the vector population.

A Case Study on the Spanish Flu 1918 - How it burrowed Into the City of New Orleans

A Case Study on the Spanish Flu 1918 - How it burrowed Into the City of New Orleans

Building Governmental Public Health Capacity to Advance Health Equity: Conclusions Based on an Environmental Scan of a Local Public Health System.

Vast health inequities persist in cities across the United States. Although recommendations exist to guide governmental public health institutions seeking to advance population health equity, local contexts are likely to influence how these pursuits take shape. We review recommendations for pursuing equity that were developed from an environmental scan conducted in the city of New Orleans. The recommendations, which are based on perspectives provided by city and state public health leaders, leaders from other city governmental departments, and community-based health department partners, center around the enduring impact of systemic racism, working across sectors, and prioritizing community engagement.

Discerning a Dignitary Offense: The Concept of Equal “Public Rights” during Reconstruction

The mountain of modern interpretation to which the language of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution has been subjected tends to overshadow the multiple concepts of antidiscrimination that were actually circulating at the time of its drafting. Moreover, as authors on race and law have pointed out, Congress itself lacked any African American representatives during the 1866–68 moment of transitional justice. The subsequent development of a “state action doctrine” limiting the reach of federal civil rights enforcement, in turn, eclipsed important contemporary understandings of the harms that Reconstruction-era initiatives sought to combat. In contrast to the oblique language of the Fourteenth Amendment, a dignity-based legal theory of affirmative equal rights had by 1867 taken center stage in the cosmopolitan city of New Orleans. Activists formulated the concept of “public rights” as a claim to participation without discrimination in the entire sphere of “common life.” Elections for delegates to Louisiana's Constitutional Convention of 1867–68, held under the broad suffrage mandated by the Military Reconstruction Acts, yielded a convention in which half of the members were men of African descent. Seeking the “impartial treatment of all men” in “[c]hurches, hotels, cars, steamboats, theaters, stores, even schools,” the convention crafted a Bill of Rights that affirmatively guaranteed to all of the state's citizens “the same civil, political, and public rights,” independent of race or color. These innovations in the defense of human rights under law drew from a deep well of anti-caste thinking developed in domestic and transnational discussions conducted in both French and English, with participants from both sides of the Atlantic and the Caribbean. Cosmopolitan progressives such as Edouard Tinchant and Jean-Charles Houzeau worked with Louisiana-born activists including Louis Charles Roudanez, Simeon Belden, and Paul Trévigne to develop and advance the idea of public rights. Legislators crafted and passed state statutes that provided for civil penalties for violation of these rights, along with a private cause of action that could yield both actual and exemplary damages. Throughout the 1870s, however, advocates met a fierce white-supremacist counterattack, one that fused obstructionist litigation, vote suppression, and vigilante violence. A claim to equal treatment under the 1868 constitution was won in the state courts by Josephine Decuir, but was overturned in 1877 at the United States Supreme Court. With the ascent of the Democratic Party, white supremacists–including the lawyer/vigilante Robert Hardin Marr-took their seats on the state Supreme Court. By 1879, the public rights guarantees had been expunged from the state's constitution. Nonetheless, for a crucial decade, the cross-racial politics of Louisiana had overcome many of the deficits of legitimacy that often undercut moments of transitional lawmaking. Delegates to the 1867–68 Constitutional Convention took the opportunity to spell out specific positive rights that they saw as essential to full civil freedom. And at the center, they placed their insistence that the state had an obligation to assure that men and women of color would not be subjected to forced indignity in the public sphere.

Comparison between Fluoroplastic and Platinum/Titanium Piston in Stapedotomy: A Prospective, Randomized Clinical Study.

The objective of this study was to compare hearing results of fluoroplastic (Teflon) Causse Loop Piston with platinum/titanium (Big Easy) Piston in patients who underwent stapedotomy due to otosclerosis. In this prospective randomized clinical trial study, Causse Loop Piston prosthesis was used in 76 ears and the Big Easy Piston prosthesis in 72 ears. The main outcomes were preoperative and postoperative pure tone audiometry and air-bone gap (ABG). Postoperative ABG closure was not significantly different between both groups. However, the Causse Loop Piston resulted in a significant improvement of the air conduction (AC) in frequencies of 250, 500, and 1,000 Hz. In addition, the improvement of speech reception threshold (SRT) was significantly higher in Causse Loop Piston group. We achieved similar postoperative ABG closure in short-term with both prostheses. However, at low frequencies, AC gain was higher in Causse Loop Piston group. In addition, patients in this group yielded better SRT.

The Impact of Government Contracting Out on Spending: The Case of Public Education in New Orleans:

In this study, we start with developing a theoretical framework incorporating theories from the contracting literature and adapt them to the unusual case of nonprofit charter schools, which yields ...

Vegetation Cover Changes in Neighborhoods of New Orleans Following Catastrophic Flooding from Hurricane Katrina

The city of New Orleans is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina and continues to experience numerous negative effects from the lingering storm damage to its urban forest cover. The goal of this study was to analyze recent changes in area coverage of all trees, shrubs, and herbaceous lawns in neighborhoods of New Orleans, particularly in three of the most severely areas damaged by the flooding of 2005, down to the scale of individual blocks, and on all demolished lots and properties conveyed new ownership since 2010. Object-based classification for 4-band aircraft imagery from the National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) was used to generate high-resolution maps of large tree canopy cover and vacant lots for the city of New Orleans. Field surveys and online map street photos were used to determine the accuracy of new city-wide maps of large tree canopy area. Based on 2017 NAIP image analysis of Katrina-flooded areas, results showed that the Lakeview neighborhood had the greatest number of large trees and the highest density of tree canopy area (at 11% cover), compared to the Lower Ninth Ward and Seventh Ward neighborhoods (both at 9% cover). However, vacant lots mapped in the Lower Ninth Ward were (on average) over twice as large in area as the vacant lot polygons in the other two neighborhoods studied. It was further estimated that 70% of the total area in the Lower Ninth Ward remains covered by vacant lots with shrub and herbaceous cover. The absolute number of lots was also highest for the Lower Ninth Ward with respect to demolished properties with a continuing net greening trend between 2010 and 2017. It is concluded that an object-based classification method can generate accurate high-resolution maps of large tree canopy cover and vacant vegetated lots for the city of New Orleans.

A haunting presence: archiving black absence and racialized mappings in Louisiana plantation sites

ABSTRACT This article argues that slavery and racial terror continue to haunt the narrative of the nation state. Through an analysis of Louisiana’s plantation sites and tours the authors examine the presence of black absence in their visual organization. We suggest that the historical but hereto little explored connection between the plantation site and the city of New Orleans is one that continues into the present day through Louisiana’s tourist economy. Thinking beyond western notions of archival knowledge that privilege text and materiality this article brings into relief the presence of black absence in Louisiana’s plantation and urban spaces. Doing so illuminates the ways in which white dominance has marked and organized narratives of the nation state as presented through plantation sites and tours.

Evaluating the impact of short-term rental regulations on Airbnb in New Orleans

The short-term rental market has grown rapidly over the last decade, led by the ascendance of Airbnb. The multifaceted impacts of short-term rentals, including increases in housing prices, changes in neighborhood character, and loses of revenue for hotels, have invited regulation from city governments. The City of New Orleans passed laws in December 2016 designed to regulate the short-term rental market and prevent further unfettered growth. This paper evaluates those regulations on the number and character of Airbnbs in the city prior to and after the enforcement of the laws. The regulations temporarily reduced the overall number of Airbnb's in New Orleans, but growth has resumed after a one-time decline. In addition, the regulations appear to have shifted growth into residential neighborhoods and away from the French Quarter.

Raccoons As an Important Reservoir for Trypanosoma cruzi: A Prevalence Study from Two Metropolitan Areas in Louisiana.

Raccoons are an important reservoir for Trypanosoma cruzi infection, having been reported to maintain a high and lengthy parasitemia. Although raccoon populations have historically been abundant in Louisiana, the prevalence rate of T. cruzi infection in raccoons in this state is unknown. Here, we tested raccoon tissues from two urban areas in Louisiana, namely Orleans Parish (OP) and East Baton Rouge Parish (EBRP), to investigate prevalence in these areas using direct detection through polymerase chain reaction. Overall, 33.6% of raccoons tested were positive. The prevalence in OP (42.9%) was significantly higher than the prevalence in EBRP (23.2%). There was no significant difference in prevalence between sexes or based on age, but there was a significant difference in infection prevalence based on season of trapping. These results suggest the importance of raccoons as a reservoir host, maintaining T. cruzi infection and potentially posing a risk to human health.

Radiologic chest CT findings from COVID-19 in Orleans Parish, Louisiana.

Orleans Parish in Louisiana is in the midst of an exponentially increasing number of patient admissions with COVID‐19 and respiratory symptoms. Patients have been described having CT findings most consistent with an early‐stage (<7 days from symptoms onset) or an advanced stage (8‐14 days from symptoms onset). We describe and illustrate those early and advanced stage CT findings from patients with documented COVID‐19 who have been admitted to University Medical Center in New Orleans, Louisiana.

A spatial analysis of climate gentrification in Orleans Parish, Louisiana post-Hurricane Katrina

BackgroundHurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans, Louisiana as a Category 3 storm in August 2005. Storm surges, levee failures, and the low-lying nature of New Orleans led to widespread flooding, damage to over 70% of occupied housing, and evacuation of 80–90% of city residents. Only 57% of the city's black population has returned. Many residents complain of gentrification following rebuilding efforts. Climate gentrification is a recently described phenomenon whereby the effects of climate change, most notably rising sea levels and more frequent flooding and storm surges, alter housing values in a way that leads to gentrification. ObjectiveTo examine the climate gentrification following hurricane Katrina by (1) estimating the associations between flooding severity, ground elevation, and gentrification and (2) whether these relationships are modified by neighborhood level pre- and post-storm sociodemographic factors. MethodsLidar data collected in 2002 were used to determine elevation. Water gauge height of Lake Ponchartrain was used to estimate flood depth. Using census tracts as a proxy for neighborhoods, demographic, housing, and economic data from the 2000 decennial census and the 2010 and 2015 American Community Survey 5-year estimates US Census records were used to determine census tracts considered eligible for gentrification (median income < 2000 Orleans Parish median income). A gentrification index was created using tract changes in education level, population above the poverty limit, and median household income. Proportional odds ordinal logistic regression was used with product terms to test for effect measure modification by sociodemographic factors. ResultsCensus tracts eligible for gentrification in 2000 were 80.2% black. Median census tract flood depth was significantly lower in areas eligible to undergo gentrification (0.70 m vs. 1.03 m). Residents of gentrification-eligible tracts in 2000 were significantly more likely to be black, less educated, lower income, unemployed, and rent their home rather than own. In 2015 in these same eligible tracts, areas that underwent gentrification became significantly whiter, more educated, higher income, less unemployed, and more likely to live in a multi-unit dwelling. Gentrification was inversely associated with flood depth and directly associated with ground elevation in eligible tracts. Marginal effect modification was detected by the effect of pre-storm black race on the relationships of flood depth and elevation with gentrification. ConclusionsGentrification was strongly associated with higher ground elevation in New Orleans. These results provide evidence to support the idea of climate gentrification described in other low-elevation major metropolitan areas like Miami, FL. High elevation, low-income, demographically transitional areas in particular – that is areas that more closely resemble high-income area demographics, may be vulnerable to future climate gentrification.

“Black Workers Matter”: Black labor geographies and uneven redevelopment in post-Katrina New Orleans

ABSTRACT For low-wage, predominantly Black workers in the city of New Orleans, post-Hurricane Katrina redevelopments constructing the “New New Orleans” present revanchist spatial configurations of uneven development. Black workers are relegated to industries characterized by precarious, discriminatory, and low-paying jobs building and supporting an upscale, and tourist-focused economic infrastructure. These emerging social relations are embedded in, and have evolved out of, a longstanding “plantation tradition” of racial and economic subjugation of Black labor. Understanding the redevelopment of New Orleans as a continuation of a “plantation logic,” in conversation with geographical discussions of labor, this paper investigates Black labor geographies in the so-called “New New Orleans”. The paper is based on interviews and participant observation with members and organizers of Stand with Dignity, part of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice (NOWCRJ), which focuses on the concerns of un- and underemployed Black workers. Drawing on narratives of resistance, this research shows how the uneven development of (work)places has been met by demands for a New Orleans in which “Black Workers Matter.”

Remaking New Orleans: Beyond Exceptionalism and Authenticity ed. by Thomas J. Adams and Matt Sakakeeny

Reviewed by: Remaking New Orleans: Beyond Exceptionalism and Authenticity ed. by Thomas J. Adams and Matt Sakakeeny Eric Nost REMAKING NEW ORLEANS: Beyond Exceptionalism and Authenticity. Thomas J. Adams and Matt Sakakeeny, editors. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2019. 368pp.; maps, illustrations, bibliog., and index. $28.95 paper (ISBN 978-1-4780-0287-1). On March 26, 2020, the United States overtook China and Italy as the center of COVID-19 crisis and New Orleans, Louisiana (NOLA) was named a hotspot, along with New York City (Reuters Staff 2020). COVID-19 was another “world’s worst” for the city to add to a list that included world’s “prison capital” (Louisiana as a whole) and world’s fastest sinking place (NPR 2012, Marshall 2013). NOLA was exceptional, an outlier compared to most of the rest of the country, requiring a NOLA-specific explanation. Some commentators were quick to blame the Mardi Gras festivities that had taken place a month earlier (Fieldstadt 2020). However, others following in NOLA’s robust tradition of lambasting parachute journalism instead highlighted the federal government’s failure to provide the city with public health guidance (Adelson 2020, Hirsch 2020). Perhaps the situation, though dire, was not so exceptional (as would be confirmed by later surges in Detroit and rural parishes surrounding NOLA, not to mention the city’s long history of confronting epidemics) and perhaps it was not really a product of New Orleans’s distinctively spirituous and celebratory culture (Aldhous and Singer-Vine 2020, Jervis et al. 2020). Adams and Sakakeeny’s Remaking New Orleans represents a remarkable collection of stories that strike at exactly these kinds of debates, through a range of essays on historical and contemporary topics written by scholars from literature studies to anthropology and political science. Topically, the volume enriches our historical geography of the city. It provides a roving review of everything from regional wrestling circuits of the 70s and 80s to mid-century gay bars, and more recently, Vietnamese Americans’ suburban farms. [End Page 279] It also aims to shift our approach to contemporary NOLA by changing what we ask of it: how is that authenticity came to be so crucial to how we view the city? In what ways is NOLA less an exception to – and more a part of or even a forerunner to – state, national, and international socio-cultural and socioeconomic trends? The volume will interest many readers of the Southeastern Geographer, including urban and historical geographers fascinated by the city itself (see O’Hare 2018 for a summary of the journal’s literature on NOLA and Louisiana). It will also interest cultural geographers who are generally concerned with authenticity and exceptionalism as particular kinds of discourses to deconstruct. Although geographers may not be represented in the volume, (i.e., Helen A. Regis, author of chapter 6, is an anthropologist from Louisiana State University), much of the content of the book should be interest to human geographers. The key concerns of the volume are inherently geographical, even if not described as such. Its motivating questions around authenticity and exceptionalism target two different spatial levels. First, remaking NOLA’s authenticity means looking towards the city itself. In a place that is politically determined to and financially dependent upon demonstrating its distinctiveness, volume contributors ask, who is it that gets to be authentic here? Who belongs and who does not? What cultural practices have come to count as traditional? As the “Producing Authenticity” section suggests, contributors’ take on this is less “let’s settle once and for all what is real New Orleans” and more “how is it that certain things have come to be described as true to city traditions? What are the social tensions that arise from this?” For instance, Nguyen in chapter ten shows us how Vietnamese Americans used their community gardening as a way to be taken seriously as authentic residents of the city before, during, and after Katrina; and Smith describes the history of the African-American-led Zulu krewe and its continued yet contested use of blackface in carnival parades in chapter four. The second geographical approach works in the opposite direction: from the city outward. The volume considers New Orleans’s...

Murder in New Orleans: The Creation of Jim Crow Policing by Jeffrey S. Adler

Reviewed by: Murder in New Orleans: The Creation of Jim Crow Policing by Jeffrey S. Adler Gregory L. Richard Murder in New Orleans: The Creation of Jim Crow Policing. By Jeffrey S. Adler. Historical Studies of Urban America. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2019. Pp. viii, 256. $35.00, ISBN 978-0-226-64331-1.) While historians attempt to explain the meteoric rise in incarceration after World War II, Jeffrey S. Adler invites us to consider a wider narrative. Adler’s work Murder in New Orleans: The Creation of Jim Crow Policing investigates the collective actions of the criminal justice system in New Orleans and the interwar racial climate, while exploring many “complex and often counter-intuitive relationships between violence and reactions to violence and between crime and punishment” in the process (pp. 2–3). Adler’s focus on the years 1920–1945 allows the reader to consider numerous watershed moments in American history, such as the Great Migration, Prohibition, the Great Depression, and World War II, and their effect on race, justice, and Jim Crow. New Orleans, while a violent southern city, provides much insight into other similar locales at the time, especially in the area of policing, politics, and economics. The disjuncture between crime rates, actual violence, and white perceptions of violence provides the paradox that is the major theme of the work. These white perceptions of crime fueled the development of a criminal justice system in New Orleans that continues to evolve in often tragic ways. In the 1920s, custom and not law dictated the criminal justice system’s disregard for African American crime. As long as white New Orleanians perceived that black crime was neatly tucked away within racial boundaries, the criminal justice system ignored what it referred to as a “‘negro problem’” (p. 21). In many cases, where ample evidence existed of black guilt in a homicide, prosecutors refused to charge the accused. Releasing these individuals back to the street, along with the endemic inaction of the criminal justice system, left African Americans feeling helpless. Hence, it is no surprise that the rates of African American violence soared as black people increasingly turned to self-help. As time progressed, the cultural and social history of the United States might lead one to believe that violent crime and homicide skyrocketed in New Orleans. Instead, according to records Adler uncovers, it decreased. The economic downfall of the late 1920s and 1930s reduced crime in the Big Easy. Unfortunately, these statistics did not matter to police and prosecutors. National-headline-making crimes, the increase in property crimes, and the rising anxiety of white people in New Orleans that the banditry would continue to grow among African Americans began the transformation of crime control into race control. Increased militarization of police, as well as the evolution of the brutal methods of confession extraction, combined with police officers seeing themselves as protectors of the white racial order. The growing [End Page 506] importance placed on perception, fueled by race and anxiety as opposed to reality, signaled a law enforcement shift that continued well into the twentieth century and beyond. The major strength of Adler’s work rests in the sources. He has succeeded in finding an urban area that had no dearth of crime and homicide statistics and records. Adler has reviewed a total of 2,118 homicide cases during the interwar period, and his primary source materials serve as a valuable foundation for any examination of criminal justice in New Orleans. He also expands his view beyond the courts, analyzing other diverse records such as coroners’ records and newspapers. Utilizing this fantastically cohesive body of primary sources, Adler helps explain the origins of the current incarceration crisis, which most assuredly rest in the interwar period. Gregory L. Richard Winona State University Copyright © 2020 The Southern Historical Association

Geographic Distribution and Host Range of Lethal Bronzing Associated with Phytoplasma Subgroup 16SrIV-D on Palms in Southern Louisiana

Lethal bronzing (LB), also previously known as date palm lethal decline or Texas Phoenix palm decline, associated with phytoplasma subgroup 16SrIV-D, was first identified in Louisiana in December 2013. A survey of palms showed that the disease was not only confined to City Park in New Orleans, where it was first detected, but is present in other parts of Orleans Parish, as well as two adjacent parishes. Canary Island date palms (Phoenix canariensis) tested positive at the highest frequency, and some edible date palms (P. dactylifera) and a small proportion of cabbage palms (Sabal palmetto) tested positive as well. Symptoms do not appear to be a reliable indicator of LB, because a substantial proportion of palms indicated as symptomatic tested negative. Furthermore, not all infected palms showed symptoms. Since the palm survey conducted in 2015 to 2016, LB has positively been identified from silver date palm (P. sylvestris) and Chinese windmill palm (Trachycarpus fortunei) in three additional parishes in Louisiana.

New Orleans Sports: Playing Hard in the Big Easy ed. by Thomas Aiello

New Orleans Sports: Playing Hard in the Big Easy ed. by Thomas Aiello

Whiteness, Artist Identities, and Artworld Spaces

This paper considers a research study into the artist identity formation in young people engaged in a teen arts internship program at a contemporary arts center in post-Katrina New Orleans using the construct of whiteness to examine access to artist identities and artworld spaces. Art has always been embedded into the cultural and spiritual practices of people’s everyday lives. Yet, modern and contemporary artworld identities and spaces have been shaped by exclusionary and oppressive practices. In the city of New Orleans, there is a persistent presence of African American art and cultural practices that thrive outside of artworld institutions. And yet, as this study demonstrates, artworld identities and spaces within the city of New Orleans and beyond, even when they espouse social justice orientations, often remain within the milieu of whiteness and related power structures.

Predicament of Services: An Independent Survey of New Orleans Mental Healthcare System

In the city of New Orleans, a number of social, cultural, economic, and historical factors have affected the availability and accessibility of mental health services. To assist individuals suffering from mental illness in the city of New Orleans, various agencies, programs and databases have been implemented to promote easy access to the available mental health services. This study explores the ease of accessing available mental health services through telephone contact. The telephone was used as the main source of contact in this study to emulate the experience that a potential mental health client would undergo when trying to find treatment. National, state, and local mental health provider databases were used to compose a list of mental health agencies in the New Orleans area. One hundred and twenty-seven facilities were identified as mental health treatment agencies. Each agency was contacted by phone and requested to participate in the study by completing a 15-item questionnaire regarding the availability and accessibility of mental health services. Seventy-nine percent [n= 101] of the agencies contacted by phone did not answer or had an automated voicemail service. Descriptive information regarding the availability and accessibility of mental health services, types of services, and treatment populations are reported and discussed. This research addresses the disparities between the burden of mental disorders, resources and accessibility.