Collaborative Behavioral (COBE) Insights Lab
The Collaborative Behavioral (COBE) Insights Lab is a research lab at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy that studies financial well-being, retirement preparedness, and health outcomes in underserved populations. Founded and directed by Luisa Blanco in 2013, the lab combines community-based participatory research with secondary data analysis to design, evaluate, and disseminate evidence-based interventions, many of them delivered through digital tools and tailored to Latino, Hispanic, and Black communities in Los Angeles and beyond.
The lab maintains an externally funded research portfolio supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Social Security Administration (via NBER), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and a range of community and philanthropic partners.
Master of Public Policy students are involved across the COBE Lab's full research portfolio, serving as co-researchers on funded projects and co-authoring peer-reviewed publications, working papers, and policy briefs. This hands-on experience prepares them for careers in research, policy, and the public and nonprofit sectors.
COBE Lab Leadership
Dr. Luisa Blanco is a professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy,
where she has taught economics and public policy since 2007, and the founder and director
of the Collaborative Behavioral (COBE) Insights Lab. An economist by training, with
a PhD from the University of Oklahoma, her research uses both quantitative and qualitative
methods, including randomized controlled trials, community-based participatory research,
and analysis of large secondary datasets, to study how digital tools and behaviorally
informed interventions can improve financial well-being and health outcomes among
underserved populations.
Blanco's research has been supported by the NIH, NSF, the Social Security Administration, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the CFPB, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and others, and has appeared in journals including the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, The Gerontologist, Journal of Medical Internet Research, World Development, and Behavioural Public Policy. She currently holds affiliations with the National Bureau of Economic Research, J-PAL, the Julian Bond Institute, and UCLA's Center for Health Innovation and Maximizing Eldercare (CHIME), and has served as a Visiting Scholar at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and a Visiting Senior Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. In addition to her work with the COBE Lab, Dr. Blanco conducts research on Latin American economic development and currently serves as a Visiting Fellow for Latin America at the Wilson Center, where she works on policy analysis examining U.S.–Latin America relations.
Mentoring students is central to Dr. Blanco's work. Through the COBE Lab, she collaborates with MPP students as co-researchers, many of whom go on to co-author peer-reviewed publications and policy briefs. Her research is grounded in long-standing partnerships with community organizations across Los Angeles and aims to translate rigorous evidence into tools and programs that meaningfully improve people's lives.
Our Community and Research Partners
The COBE Lab's work is made possible by the trust and collaboration of our community partners. Organizations across Los Angeles and Ventura Counties open their doors to the lab, connect us with the communities at the center of our research, and ensure that our studies reflect community priorities and lived experiences. We are deeply grateful for these partnerships, and we honor them by sharing our findings with our partners and translating evidence into programs that serve their communities. We also collaborate with research organizations and funders on projects that draw on state and national data, allowing the lab to connect what we learn locally to broader policy conversations.
Together, these partnerships reflect Pepperdine's commitment to scholarship for greater purpose and the School of Public Policy's strategic focus on research that advances human flourishing. By promoting financial well-being and health among populations too often left out of policy conversations, the lab carries that mission into the communities it serves.
