Adverse Childhood Experiences Study in the Spotlight
Jan 05 2010A recent article in TIME magazine puts one of the seminal pieces of research about the long-term consequences of child maltreatment in the mainstream media spotlight. In the article, “How Childhood Trauma Can Cause Obesity”, Maia Szalavitz describes the landmark Adverse Childhood Experiences study, which continues to provide evidence of the social, emotional, physical, and mental effects of negative experiences early in life.
Dr. Vincent Felitti’s discoveries began quite by accident. As an obesity researcher at Kaiser Permanente, he wondered why so many participants in his study would lose some weight, then drop out of the study before its completion. Upon further investigation, he learned that a large proportion of them had experienced certain stressful or even traumatic experiences during childhood. As he dug through the data, he found relationships between these negative experiences and a host of ailments, including but hardly limited to adult obesity. Researchers identified nine Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, that are related to negative adult outcomes:
- Recurrent physical abuse
- Recurrent emotional abuse
- Contact sexual abuse
- An alcohol and/or drug abuser in thehousehold
- An incarcerated household member
- Someone who is chronically depressed, mentally ill, institutionalized, or suicidal
- Mother is treated violently
- One or no parents
- Emotional or physical neglect
ACEs are quite common, and many people have one or more in their history. However, when children experience multiple ACEs before the age of 19, their risk for many negative outcomes increases. This is not to say that all children with multiple ACEs will experience these outcomes, but
“The connections [are] clear: compared with a person with no adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, a person with four or more has almost double the risk of obesity. Having four or more ACEs more than doubles the risk of heart attack and stroke, and nearly quadruples the risk of emphysema. The risk for depression is more than quadrupled. Although many of these outcomes could reflect the influences of genes and other environmental influences — beyond those occurring in childhood — the tight relationship between increasing ACE numbers and increasing health risks makes the role of child trauma clear.”-TIME
The ACE study provides a compelling argument for investing in prevention of child maltreatment and other ACEs, and for building Protective Factors with families. For more information about the ACE study, check out our new research brief, part of a series of summaries of studies that are especially relevant to Strengthening Families.
“Circles of Caring: What Child Abuse Prevention Looks Like”
Dec 18 2009By guestblogger Jim McKay, State Coordinator, Prevent Child Abuse West Virginia
If you’re working in social services, do you ever get tired of trying to explain your work to your father-in-law who doesn’t really get what you do? Do you have trouble explaining how everyone has a role to play in supporting child development, and in the process how we prevent child abuse and neglect? Do you struggle to define the word “prevention”, so that people understand it’s more than calling CPS when you suspect child abuse?
These are the very dilemmas that we have struggled with at Prevent Child Abuse West Virginia as we implement programs and build community support to achieve our mission to eliminate child maltreatment in WV. It is hard to get people involved in our cause when they don’t understand that child abuse can be prevented or recognize how their efforts can make a difference.
One reason we love the Strengthening Families initiative is because it offers a framework for our work to talk about what we want to build (family protective factors) versus what we want to prevent (child abuse and neglect). At the same time, there are moments when the jargon of “protective factors” can be misunderstood.
To help us tell a new story of prevention (and also explain what we do to our fathers-in-law), we have produced a new DVD and video entitled, “Circles of Caring: What Child Abuse Prevention Looks Like”, which is embedded below. The video is our best effort to interpret the latest research about reframing from the Frameworks Institute blended with the Center for the Study of Social Policy’s (CSSP) protective factor framework.
We hope the video will provide some answers to the questions, “What does child abuse prevention look like?” and “Is it really possible to prevent child abuse?”, in a way that is easy to understand for many audiences.
We appreciate the generous support of the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, which provided funding for the production of “Circles of Caring”, as well as CSSP for providing the research and framework on which this video is based. Most of all, we appreciate the thriving national network of Strengthening Families supporters, professionals, and child abuse prevention advocates who have shared their talents and expertise to help make this video a reality. It is very rewarding to work as part of a growing national movement to support children and their families in such a meaningful way.
Additional copies of the Circles of Caring DVD are available for purchase for $25 (which includes shipping and handling). Please visit our website at www.preventchildabusewv.org or follow us on Twitter, @team4wvchildren for more information about our efforts to strengthen families and communities in West Virginia.
Parent Leaders, in Their Own Words
Dec 14 2009Increasingly, child- and family-serving organizations and agencies are recognizing that an integral part of their work must be the development and meaningful inclusion of parent leaders who will bring their perspective to the work of providing services and creating policies. A new collection of recordings from the FRIENDS National Resource Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention and its Parent Advisory Council features six parent leaders telling their stories of how they developed into leaders, and what that role has meant to them. These stories highlight how parent leadership not only benefits the involved parents themselves, but help child- and family-serving organizations better achieve their missions.
The FRIENDS Parent Advisory Council has made these recordings available to the public for increasing awareness about the importance of parent leadership. The recordings may also be used as tools for training and education.
Find the recordings HERE.
News of the Week
Dec 11 2009Children with Deployed Parents are At-Risk for Negative Outcomes
A new study from the RAND Corporation surveyed youth in military families who have a parent deployed overseas, finding that the longer the parent’s deployment, the greater the risk for negative social and emotional outcomes. The New York Times reported on the study. As military personnel face multiple, longer deployments, more and more of their children demonstrate symptoms of anxiety and behavioral difficulties. While the children surveyed for this study were between the ages of 11 and 17, one expects that the findings would be similarly negative for younger children with deployed parents. This raises questions about the how the effects of parental deployment would manifest themselves among young children and the protective factors that military families with children of different ages need reinforced.
Struggles of Second-Generation Latino Families
Two Washington Post articles this week examined the situation of many second generation Latino families from different angles. In the United States, “the offspring of Latino immigrants now account for one of every 10 children,” and disparities in educational achievement other measures of well-being. The first story discusses these challenges in the of a young father who is an immigrant and a dropout. The second examines the struggles of teen parents in the Latino immigrant community, which has an alarmingly high rate of teen pregnancy.
Teen parenthood often adds an extra hurdle for the offspring of Hispanic immigrants. Many are already struggling to get enough education to overcome their mostly Mexican and Central American parents’ high level of poverty, limited schooling and lack of legal status.
Budget Cuts Threaten Family-Strengthening Services around the Country
Dwindling state and local funds continued to threaten early care and education, child abuse prevention, and family support programs this week:
- Indiana: Cuts raise concerns for child programs (South Bend Tribune)
- North Carolina: N.C.’s early education program feels budget pinch (WRAL)
- Ohio: Financially-strapped schools may delay all-day kindergarten (NBC4 Columbus)
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New GAO Report Supports a Variety of Methodologies for Identifying Effective Program
Dec 03 2009A new report from the Government Accountability Office, Program Evaluation: A Variety of Rigorous Methods Can Help Identify Effective Interventions, was released on November 23, 2009, at a time when the federal government is paying unprecedented attention to the use of evidence in selecting programs and practices to support. The report examines the protocols used by the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, an independent entity that has been helping the federal government determine which available interventions have been proven effective. Of 63 interventions reviewed, the Coalition only found that 6 met their strict criteria. Senate members requested the GAO report to understand whether the Coalition’s methods were transparent and whether it’s standards might be too narrow.
Although the GAO makes no formal recommendations, it draws four conclusions:
- “Requiring evidence from randomized studies as sole proof of effectiveness will likely exclude many potentially effective and worthwhile practices;
- Reliable assessments of evaluation results require research expertise but can be improved with detailed protocols and training;
- Deciding to adopt an intervention involves other considerations in addition to effectiveness, such as cost and sustainability to the local community;and
- Improved evaluation quality would also help identify effective interventions.”
The report also identifies several rigorous evaluation methods that can be used when randomized control trials are not feasible, including quasi-experimental comparison groups, statistical analyses of observational data, and in-depth case studies.
Read summaries and the full report HERE.
