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THE ACE STUDY:  EVERY NEEDS TO KNOW THIS

Presenters: Vincent Felitti

Abstract Category: Medical

Instruction Level: Beginner

Presentation: Not Provided

Description:

The ACE Study is a long term, in-depth analysis of over 17,000 adults, matching their adult health status against adverse childhood experiences that occurred a half-century earlier.

Abstract:

The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study is a long term, in-depth analysis of over 17,000 middle-aged, middle-class members of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program, matching their current health status against 8 categories of adverse childhood experiences that occurred on average a half-century earlier. We found that:  1) adverse childhood experiences are surprisingly common although typically concealed and unrecognized,  2) they still have a profound effect 50 years later, although now transformed from psychosocial experience into organic disease and mental illness, and that  3) adverse childhood experiences are the main determinant of the health and social well-being of the nation.

We will present the full range of our findings and discuss their implications for diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. It should be possible for participants to come away with an understanding of the need routinely to screen for adverse childhood experiences in all patients, have an awareness of their relevance to chronic conditions and 'problem patients', and have a sense of appropriate approaches to treatment that will need to be devised for each case. The implications for medical practice of this comprehensive biopsychosocial approach are profound and have the potential to provide a new platform upon which to base primary care medicine.

The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study thus has direct and important relevance to the practice of medicine and to the field of social planning. Its findings indicate that many of our more common public health and adult medical problems are the result of events and experiences present but not recognized in childhood. The ACE Study challenges as needlessly superficial the current conceptions of depression and addiction, showing them to have a very strong dose-response relationship to antecedent life experiences. Further information about the ACE Study is available at www.ACEStudy.org and http://www.cdc.gov/NCCDPHP/ACE/