Trauma Screening Tools

Ben, you've a unique challenge as a community organizer, and I'm not certain how you or the community would use an ACE screening tool. Having both worked as an organizer, myself, and been a participant [currently] in inter-faith advocacy, I'd be grateful to learn of your progress and challenges.

I heard some concerns raised when Vermont's legislature held hearings on HB 762, during the 2013 session-which would have required every Vermont health care provider to screen every patient-regardless of age, for ACEs. Similar concerns were raised during the first year of the ACE study at Kaiser-Permanente. Kaiser folks carried a pager so anyone "triggered" by any question could have access to a trained counselor, or appropriate counseling services. It's my understanding that none of the 17,000 participants called the 'after-hours' paging service, during the year CDC/Kaiser folks began the study.

The World Health Organization (WHO) adopted [and modified] the U.S. CDC ACE screening tool, for both its 2013 assessment of the world's healthiest children, and other ACE screeniong; its now known as the WHO ACE International Questionaire, and is available with instruction guide[s] on the WHO website (in an assortment of languages). Cautionary notes and suggestions are included in the WHO ACE International Questionaire.

I hope folks from Vermont will "weigh-in" on this discussion, as well as Dr. Anda and Dr. Felitti, and folks from Trauma-Informed communities like Kansas City, Missouri & Tarpon Springs, Florida.

I also hope our member clinicians will "weigh-in" on this as well. I hope members will also address the pre-natal issues, such as Bessel van der Kolk has in his book: "The Body Keeps the Score", and Peter Levine has in "Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma" especially the chapter on Emotional First Aid for Children.

Hi, Ben -- If you're looking for people who are using ACEs as a screening tool, or to use in taking histories, check out this group -- Taking an ACEs history -- Who's doing it and how? We have three more stories in development to add to that.
We're also in the final stages of setting up a ACEs in Primary Care group, and after that's set up, we'll be hosting a text chat with someone from a clinic that's integrated trauma-informed and resilience-building practices based on ACEs.

Cheers, Jane

Hi Ben,  I believe that that Children's Hospital at Montifiore (Rahil Briggs) is using the ACE questionnaire prenatally and at birth.  Collecting ACE scores of both parents and the new born baby - if either parent has an ACE score of 4 or more this generates a referral to their Healthy Steps program.  Here's a link to a slide show Dr. Briggs presented http://www.albertafamilywellne...Briggs%20Plenary.pdf

Ben,

 I am not sure this is what you were looking for, but I used the revised impact of the events Gale to determine if somebody symptoms are at the level of posttraumatic stress disorder her. You can access it at the following link. 

http://www.emdrhap.org/content...ts_Scale_Revised.pdf

Sent from my iPad

Hello Ben, we have been assessing expectant parents and parents of birth to 5-year-olds during well-child visits for the past 8 months through a pilot grant and having a lot of success. We assess for parent ACEs and resilience, provide social work and parenting services, and have trained all clinic staff. The program is called SCAN (Score, Connect and Nurture), and we are about to expand the program to all children (birth-18) and the ER. Email me offline if you would like additional information. julie.mccrae@du.edu. I can also direct you to a webinar we presented recently that explains the model, family and staff experiences. Best, Julie

This is only an indirect answer because I am not sure re. ACEs screening tools, but two midwife-researchers at the University of Michigan (Mickey Sperlich and Julia Seng) wrote an amazing book called "Survivor Moms" combining qualitative data on pregnancy, birth, and postpartum as experienced by survivors of child sexual abuse with insights from the science. After that, they created a structured intervention by the same name that is a treatment for PTSD specifically for pregnant women. It has gone through some trials but, as I last heard, they would like to partner with additional sites to implement and evaluate this screening and treatment approach.