Social worker Darryl Webster has a conversation with Nickolas Armstrong during a town hall at Houston Elementary School in Washington, DC, in June 2016. Houston Elementary has worked to become a trauma-informed school. (Bonnie Jo Mount/Washington Post)

In the District, 47 percent of children and teens have experienced a traumatic event, such as the death or incarceration of a parent, witnessing or being a victim of violence, or living with someone who has been suicidal or who has a drug or alcohol problem, according to new federal data. In the Maryland and Virginia, the rate was 41 percent.

The findings come from state-by-state survey data released Thursday from the 2016 National Survey of Children’s Health, which aims to take a first-ever real-time look of the rate of children affected by so-called adverse childhood experiences. Such experiences can have serious long-term impacts on a child’s health and well-being, studies show, including increased risk for smoking, alcoholism, depression, and heart disease.

Public health advocates hope this data, which is expected to be collected annually, will undergird a wide range of policy changes to prevent such adversity and to help children heal.

“These numbers tell a story about what is happening nationally to children. They have implications for schools and families and communities and health care,” said Martha Davis, senior program officer for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is promoting policies that can counteract childhood adversity, such as paid family leave and home visiting programs that give parents time and resources to support their children, as well as efforts to improve quality child care and prevent community violence.

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Read the full article by Michael Alison Chandler from 10/19/2017 here: https://www.washingtonpost.com...m_term=.071ddf93220f