Partnership for an Active Community Environment

Helping one New Orleans community become more active.    

The Partnership for an Active Community Environment (PACE) is a 5-year research project designed to figure out ways to improve physical activity in a defined New Orleans neighborhood.  

Our research is in the Upper Ninth Ward of New Orleans, bounded by St. Claude Avenue, Elysian Fields Avenue, North Claiborne Avenue, and Poland Avenue.  

PACE is the core research project of the Prevention Research Center at Tulane University, a program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

This community-driven project includes three main components:   

• Implementing at least one change to the neighborhood to improve physical activity; 

• Training community members to become lay health advisors and helping support their projects to improve the neighborhood;

• Surveying the community at the beginning, mid-point and end of the project to determine what impact these changes have had on the community.

The first change introduced into the neighborhood was the opening of the PACE Community Playspace.  Learn more about the schoolyard here. 

Go outside and play!

The PACE Community Playspace is now open!!! Children are free to use the new playground at Dr. Charles R. Drew Elementary School to play afterschool and weekends.  Children will be supervised by adults, but will not be provided with structured activities.  The playground is located behind Drew Elementary, at 3819 St Claude Avenue, New Orleans.  The PACE Community Playspace will observe the following hours:

• Monday-Friday: 3:45-dusk

• Saturday: 10 am - 3pm

• Sunday: 1 pm- 4 pm

All children are required to return an enrollment form, which are available through this site and at Drew Elementary. 

PACE Community
Partners 

• All Citizens Together
• Bunny Friend Neighborhood Organization
• Crescent City Peace Alliance
• Desire Street Ministries
• Faubourg St Roch Neighborhood Improvement Association
• Guardians Institute
• Holy Marionites Convent
• The Renaissance Project
• STEP Together New Orleans
• Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine