Philly.com columnist and ACEsConnection member Jonathan Purtle wrote this report about yesterday's symposium about children and toxic stress, sponsored by the Children's Crisis Treatment Center and WHYY.
Four years ago, on a train from Philadelphia to Washington, Sandra Bloom told me about the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. I hadn’t heard of it, and was astounded to learn about strong connections it found between exposure to trauma and toxic stress in childhood, and experiencing behavioral, social, emotional, and health problems as an adult. I told almost everyone I knew. I circulated the study’s publications among my public health peers. Hardly any of them had heard of it in 2011, when I wrote the first of several related posts.
On Thursday, I sat with more than 350 Philadelphians at WHHY's studios as the study was discussed at a sold-out symposium entitled “Children and Toxic Stress: A Public Health Response for Philadelphia’s Children and Families.” Awareness about the ACE Study (first findgs were published in 1998) and its implications has spread rapidly over the past few years. And Philadelphia, in the words of Arthur Evans, commissioner of the city's Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services, has been the “epicenter” of knowledge dissemination. “Philadelphia is the only city where only a few hands pop up when I ask how many people have not heard of the ACE Study,” said Martha Davis, a new program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation who until recently headed the local Institute for Safe Families.
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