ACES — Active Community Environments

CDC's Active Community Environments Initiative (ACES) promotes walking, bicycling, and the development of accessible recreation facilities. It was developed in response to data from a variety of disciplines, including public health, urban design, and transportation planning. These data suggest characteristics of our communities such as proximity of facilities, street design, density of housing, availability of public transit and of pedestrian and bicycle facilities play a significant role in promoting or discouraging physical activity.

This initiative encourages environmental and policy interventions that will affect increased levels of physical activity and improved public health. The goals are to

• encourage the development of pedestrian and bicycle friendly environments.
  
• promote active forms of transportation like walking and bicycling.
  
• disseminate information related to Active Community Environments.
  

Current activities to promote the goals of the Active Community Environments Initiative include

• promoting physical activity through trails.
  
• development of the KidsWalk-to-School program to promote walking and bicycling to school.
  
• collaboration with public and private agencies to promote National and International Walk-to-School Day.
  
• development of the Active Community Environments guidebook for public health practitioners to use to partner with transportation and city planning organizations to promote walking, bicycling, and close to home recreation facilities.
  
• a partnership with the National Park Services Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance Program to promote the development and use of close-to-home parks and recreational facilities.
  
• collaboration on an Atlanta-based study to review the relationships of land use, transportation, air quality, and physical activity.
  
• collaboration with the Environmental Protection Agency on a national survey to study attitudes of the American public toward the environment, walking, and bicycling.
  

Active Community Environment Working Papers

The Active Community Environment workgroup is collaborating on a number of working papers and data analyses designed to better understand how the natural, built, and social environment influences physical activity. As research provides new data the current working papers will be updated or new articles posted.

How Land Use and Transportation Systems Impact Public Health [PDF-845k]
This paper is a synthesis of the literature on the relationship between physical activity and community design.
(updated 12/26/2000)

How Land Use and Transportation Systems Impact Public Health: An Annotated bibliography [PDF-635k]
(updated 12/26/2000)

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