A sense of place is powerful in New Orleans, where people tend to identify strongly with their neighborhoods. But while the culture and tradition of these neighborhoods may enrich the local lifestyle, a new initiative is analyzing how other particulars of place can have precisely the opposite effect. The program is called Orleans Place Matters and it takes a hard look at neighborhood-level factors ranging from housing and transportation to discrimination and the legacy of segregation.

“So we see and are not surprised by the Lower Ninth Ward, Central City, parts of Treme, parts of the Seventh Ward with extremely low life outcomes, because of the history, because of the inability to bring equity to those places,” says Andre Perry, an education policy expert at Loyola University. “Just to be clear, in some communities, the life expectancy rate is 55.5 years compared to 80 for others, so there’s a stark difference.”

Perry is the team leader for Orleans Place Matters. This local program is part of a national initiative from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research group based in Washington, D.C. In cities across the country, its Place Matters program gives community organizations the data and analysis they need, both to understand what factors impact health in their neighborhoods and to advocate for effective change.

“We’re going to continue to produce reports and produce data that community members can leverage to get better policy for their communities,” Perry says. “Families need data to go to city council and go to the mayor and say, look this is what’s happening. And so we want to provide that data for them.”

Read more and listen to the radio story at 89.9 WWNO.