American College of Preventative Medicine 's article challenging ACE research and practices

The most important yet completely ignored takeaway from the ACE Study is that many adverse childhood experiences could be prevented by an entirely new kind of parenting education that reaches everyone, everywhere... and it goes without saying that it would also promote positive childhood experiences.

Public health authorities like the American Academy of Pediatrics, the CDC, the NIH, and the Harvard Center on the Developing Child should put together a list of parenting behaviors and practices generally recognized as supporting the healthy development of children. Then these organizations should partner with the Ad Council to create public service announcements to communicate these behaviors and practices to the public. I’m thinking billboards especially…radio and television too. These psa’s would not have an end date. They would become a permanent fixture of our culture. In manufacturing there’s a concept called continuous quality improvement. Well, this would be an effort to continuously improve the quality of parenting. Our children and our children’s children deserve nothing less.

Interesting idea: that the very process of screening for ACEs might re-traumatize children.

This is why my co-writer, @Louise Hart and I, believe in a wrap-around approach that is both healing and prevention focused. Educating adults about their own ACEs helps them stop cycles of trauma. We share many studies that give insight into this in our books, The Winning Family and The Bullying Antidote.

@David Dooley we'd lost touch with you about billboards and bumper stickers! But there's great news in that our beloved book, The Winning Family, is back in print, with a new subtitle: Where No One Has to Lose. All of Dr. Hart's independent research from the first edition has since been backed up by science. The book is packed full of quoteables that would be great on bumper stickers, and help get the word out to parents about this powerful resource. It's a recommended book on this site. Please check it out!

You can find the book everywhere books are sold.

Welcome to the frey! If you look back about the time this position paper was originally published I discussed it in an extensive series of blog posts on PACESConnection starting 10//23/22.

Essentially, as all of us who work in the field know, the ACE screen used in the clinical setting has had a powerful, worldwide, catalytic effect, not only bringing people who experienced trauma into treatment, but changing treatment approaches and modalities for the better, and bringing into general worldwide awareness the huge pathogenic potential of child maltreatment.

The American College of Preventive Medicine looking through academic glasses and selecting a few highly structured studies has arrived at a distorted view of this clinical endeavor. Their attitude and judgement was reinforced by important factors which were beyond their capacity to perceive but are crucial barriers to optimal care for this condition and its evaluation in the real world:

There are 5 main problems retarding the knowledge and practice of effective treatment for the trauma of child abuse and neglect. The American College of Preventive Medicine could make a much better contribution to health policy and to remediating the effects of child abuse and neglect by pointing out these problems and advocating for needed change, rather than being a naysayer.

(1) The biologically minded NIH avoids funding studies of clinical research into child maltreatment and its remediation ($30 to $50 million/year for the past 8 years - half as much as for cystic fibrosis and one tenth of that spent on childhood cancer).

(2) Anything not pills or surgery gets dumped outside the medical clinic/office as "mental health" or a "social problem" not a medical one. This is the rigid medical silo, represents a narrow mindedness reinforced by technology, and a loss of the human connection.

(3) The same siloing prevents the knowledge, skills, and accomplishments of the psychology, social work, counseling world caring for and treating individual victims of abuse and neglect from impacting the house of medicine.

(4) There is still no mental health parity in US medical care because the resource intensity it requires is too threatening to our commercial insurance system's profits.

(5)  There is a massive national shortage of mental health counseling personnel

Since the CDC's role in the original ACE Study began with a Kaiser-Permanente 'Obesity Clinic' where participants lost 50-100 pounds, then dropped out of the program. Does anyone know if the WHO ACE International Questionnaire has an ACE Screening Category regarding "Being Sent to Bed without a MEAL"-as later life nicotine use may be served by the 'Appetite Suppressant' effect of nicotine/ cigarette or Vape use. Could we also ask for input from the Neuro-scientists ? ? ?

I've been getting a lot of intrusive recollections of incidents where I was 'sent to bed without an 'evening meal', of late (Partly due to it's interaction with Warfarin/ Coumadin [it can reportedly cause a 25-50% increase in 'Prothrombin Time'[how long it takes blood to clot/keep mechanical heart valves 'operational']