For the first time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has put together an analysis of adverse childhood experiences, or ACES, and the potential positive impacts of preventing such experiences.
In a study released last month, the CDC concludes that reducing the number of adverse childhood experiences that a child encounters could reduce cases of depression by 44%, or by 21 million cases, reduce heart disease by 1.9 million cases and reduce obesity by 2.5 million cases. Smoking could drop by 33%, heavy drinking by 24% and even unemployment by 15%.
Idaho ranks 5th in the country for states with children experiencing three or more ACES, so getting a handle on the problem could solve several socioeconomic problems here.
You likely have started hearing about adverse childhood experiences recently. It was the subject of a PBS documentary, “Adverse Childhood Experiences - A Public Health Issue” that ran on Idaho Public Television this fall.
The study of ACES has been around for a while but is starting to catch on in Idaho and, really, nationwide.
“There’s a lot of work happening right now to better understand the impact of adversity, and not only the impact but also how to help those who have significant exposure to adversity to become more resilient,” said Jean Mutchie, community health manager at St. Luke’s for the West Treasure Valley, who’s been working on the issue through a new initiative, 2C Kids Succeed, in Canyon County. “Honestly, I haven’t seen people rallying around something like this in a really long time. … I’m kind of stunned at the kind of movement around this.”
She said prosecutors, educators, judges, law enforcement, health officials, legislators and school, city and county officials have all come together to rally around the issue of adverse childhood experiences. It’s part of a larger, statewide movement underway.
Examples of adverse childhood experiences can include such things as verbal, physical or sexual abuse, witnessing domestic violence, drug or alcohol abuse in the home or having a parent in jail or prison.
Here’s the incredible thing about ACES: Doctors who started studying this in the mid-1990s started noticing a direct correlation between the number of ACES a person had growing up and negative outcomes later in life, such as obesity, smoking, heart disease, drug abuse, depression, unintended pregnancies and more. And it wasn’t just a casual link. Researchers found the higher the number of ACES reported among 17,000 subjects, the higher the incidence of these negative outcomes later in life.
It seems hard to believe, but the correlations are remarkably strong.
For example, researchers found that people who had one ACE were twice as likely to be an alcoholic as someone without any ACES. People with two ACES were four times as likely to be an alcoholic, those with three ACES were nearly five times as likely, and those with four or more ACES were 7.4 times as likely to be an alcoholic.
This strong, direct correlation is repeated over and over again for dozens of negative adult outcomes, including smoking, heart disease, intimate partner violence, crime, even poor work performance and financial stress. Suicide goes from twice as likely with one ACE to 12.2 times as likely for people with four or more ACES. People with six or more ACES died, on average, nearly 20 years younger than those without any ACES, according to the study.
The more ACES, the more likely respondents had negative outcomes in life.
The effects are more than just personal. The economic toll reaches into the billions of dollars, from health care costs to criminal justice, special education and child welfare costs.
“We have a school-to-prison pipeline, what does that do to our workforce?” Mutchie said. “If we have kids falling behind in school because of things that are happening to them at home, that they can’t control, if they come to school hungry, if you have an incarcerated parent and so you’re constantly worried, you don’t know where you’re going to live. People are starting to realize, that makes sense (about why there’s a problem), and what do we do as a community to shift the narrative.”
I first heard about ACES about a year ago from Jeff Myers, who is vice president of marketing and communications for the Idaho Youth Ranch. He was just getting involved in the research and was trying to spread the word.
When he showed me the statistics, it hit me like a ton of bricks. It brought together a lot of threads from my personal and professional life.
As a Cub Scout leader, I would see a wide array of kids from different kinds of families, and my heart would just burst working with kids who were clearly smart and funny and just like every other kid but would act out or get into fights or come to meetings clearly in a bad mood because something had happened. As a journalist, I would go into schools to write stories, and I would often be struck by how some kids changed so dramatically from one year to the next.
Then, as a journalist covering crime, I would come across young adults who had committed robbery, assault or worse and realize they were those kids in middle school at some point, smart, funny, just like every other kid except they would act up or get in fights.
Myers got the ball rolling, and the Idaho Youth Ranch has been one of the organizations leading the charge, along with several other groups in Idaho, on ACES. There are now 80 partners participating in what’s being called the Idaho Resilience Project, looking at ways to create a statewide system of combating ACES and their effects. It involves not only coping with the effects of ACES but preventing them to begin with and changing how we react to children experiencing ACES. It’s a shift from, “What’s wrong with you?” to “What’s happening with you?”
Among the diverse group of participants are the St. Luke’s and Saint Alphonsus health systems, the Idaho Youth Ranch, the Idaho Children’s Trust Fund, the Speedy Foundation, the Idaho Council on Domestic Violence and Victims Assistance, Central District Health Department, Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, several school districts, Boise State University and dozens more now meeting regularly as part of the Idaho Resilience Project.
“You know you are working on something that just resonates with people when a group of 8-9 people in a coffee shop in the first week of January in 2019 grows to more than 80 organizations joining together in less than a year, “ Myers said in an email to me. “Every month we are approached by more and more organizations looking for presentations or training on adverse childhood experiences and how to build communities of resilience.”
I truly believe this is the magic recipe to solving so many of our health and socioeconomic ailments in Idaho, and the enthusiasm and participation around this effort is encouraging.
“There is nothing more important to creating promising futures for the kids of Idaho than reducing childhood trauma and providing hope, healing and resilience to those affected by adverse childhood experiences,” Myers wrote. “We have the opportunity to literally change the future of Idaho.”
I don’t think that’s an overstatement.
This story was originally published December 26, 2019 10:27 AM.
