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The Blind Willie Johnson blues song “Motherless Children” highlights the maternal bonds that we all know are critical to emotional and cognitive development. Authors of previous work looking at infant stress response have found that these bonds begin in utero and can be influenced by both maternal and paternal influences and across multiple generations. 1 The observations of Barker et al 2 on the Dutch famine birth cohort of World War II were perhaps the first published observations of this...

Life expectancy is highly correlated with ACE scores and complex childhood trauma. Enter your address or zip code to know what the health outcomes are in your neighborhoods and communities. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Life Expectancy Calculator

Adverse Childhood Experiences Are Associated with Unmet Healthcare Needs among Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder [The Journal of Pediatrics] Objective: "To explore associations between level of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and unmet healthcare needs among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using a population-based sample." The Differential Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences in the Development of Pre-Diabetes in a Longitudinal Cohort of US Adults [The Journal of...

photo/ CCO 1.0 Screening their pediatric patients for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) showed researchers at Montefiore Medical Center that their cut-off score of 4 for referring children and families for help was too high, says Dr. Dana Crawford, a pediatric psychologist and the director of the Trauma-Informed Care Program at Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, NY. Dr. Dana Crawford Their analysis of the results not only confirmed what pediatricians had suspected, it helped them...

Photo: Woodleywonderworks/ CC 2.0 "When researchers first discovered a link in the late 1990s between childhood adversity and chronic health problems later in life, the real revelation was how common those experiences were across all socioeconomic groups. But the first major study to focus on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) was limited to a single healthcare system in San Diego. Now a new study — the largest nationally representative study to date on ACEs — confirms that these...

[Editor's note: Dr. Harise Stein at Stanford University edits a web site -- abuseresearch.info -- that focuses on the health effects of abuse, and includes research articles on ACEs. Every month, she's posting the summaries of the abstracts and links to research articles that address only ACEs. Thank you, Harise!! -- Jane Stevens] Schickedanz A, Halfon N, Sastry N, Chung PJ. Parents' Adverse Childhood Experiences and Their Children's Behavioral Health Problems. Pediatrics. 2018 Aug;142(2).

In July, medical residents in family medicine at Kaiser Permanente in San Jose, CA, began screening adult patients for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). But it’s an ACE survey with a twist: it’s shorter, not the 10-question survey of the original CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study , according to Dr. Kathryn Ridout who is leading the pilot along with Dr. Francis Chu and Dr. Alec Uy . Why a shorter ACE survey? Dr. Kathryn Ridout “When we were doing our initial discussions with stakeholders in...

Colorado is testing a new approach to providing services to struggling families in an effort to address the intergenerational cycle of poverty, incarceration and foster care. Two Generation (2Gen) is a new initiative by the state recognizing that children and their parents are best served by recognizing the needs of the entire family unit. “CDHS embedded the 2Gen approach into all of our services, recognizing that our clients only succeed when their providers or children also get the support...

photo by Barbara Hobbs/ wikimedia commons Addressing Childhood Adversity and Social Determinants in Pediatric Primary Care: Recommendations for New Hampshire [Institute for Health Policy and Practice] Associations of adverse childhood experiences and suicidal behaviors in adulthood in a US nationally representative sample [Child: Care, health and development] Intergenerational transmission of adverse childhood experiences via maternal depression and anxiety and moderation by child sex...

The award for best line ever in a medical report: “Play is not frivolous.” It’s not new, the idea that free play helps children develop in remarkable ways. Multiple studies have found that play builds social skills and creativity and develops the ability to solve problems and to collaborate. What is new is that a clinical report published in August by the American Academy of Pediatrics specifically calls on pediatricians and family doctors to start taking play, well, seriously – in fact to...

Despite a reversal of the Trump administration family separation policy, as of July 2018, more than 2000 children remain separated from their parents or legal guardians. 1 In an article published in JAMA, Howard A. Zucker, MD, JD, and Danielle Greene, DrPH, of the New York State Department of Health, suggest that child-parent separation during an already tumultuous and emotionally strenuous event may exert greater long-term physical and mental health effects on children than is currently...